#filler tag number three

[inkedbydesire]

Can’t Let Go (Pt 3)

Jimmy Uso x Black Fem Reader

(Part 1)

(Part 2)

A/N: This is inspired by an Adele song called “Can’t Let Go.” Please give it a listen if you’ve never heard it. It will enhance your reading experience (I hope 😂).

Warnings: None

Summary: A single letter set everything in motion, and now, after two years, you're finally facing the man who shattered your heart. With only a few days to prepare you muster up the courage to face him. What happens when old wounds and festering emotions resurface after all of this time?

Word Count: 2.7k

A/N: My consistency SUCKS but this is a filler chapter to let the people who are reading this story know that I’m still here no matter how long it takes. And I’m working on wrapping up Extortion too. Plus I have yet another Jimmy idea that I need to get off 😂 …… but I apologize in advance for any typos or grammatical errors I may have missed during my proofreading.

Sidenote: Adele’s “Can’t Let Go” inspires the overall story, but here are 4 more songs to describe Y/N’s feelings. Feel free to give them a listen if you want. I think it will enhance your reading experience (I hope).

Tagging: @empressdede @amandairene88 @mindairy

************************************************************************

Tuesday 8:17 p.m. Jon's New Number: I'll be there Friday. Just tell me when and where.

Wednesday 9:04 p.m. Jon's New Number: Y/N?

Thursday 11:27 a.m. Jon's New Number: I don't know why you haven't responded yet. But Y/N I'm not trying to pressure you or anything. I just hope you haven't changed your mind on me. Either way, let me know.

"You've already opened the can of worms. Ignoring him now would be pointless."

Jade's voice startled you, abruptly snatching you out of your thoughts. Through the chaos swirling around your head you hadn't even heard her come back from the bathroom, let alone creep up behind the couch to read over your shoulder. Reflexively, you hit the lock button on your phone, shutting out yet another one of Jonathan's texts. You had forgotten just how persistent he could be when he wanted something.

"Shut up, Jade. This is all your fault anyway," you muttered, your head sinking into your hands. The accusation was half-hearted, but your bubbling frustration needed a target, and Jade was an easy one. The perfect scapegoat so you didn't have to face the fact that you did this. Your eagerness to read Jonathan's letter set all of this in motion. And now you had to deal with the consequences of your actions.

Since receiving his "I'll be there Friday" text Tuesday night your thoughts had been a storm, and you had no idea how to quiet them. It wasn't supposed to happen this soon.

Jonathan wasn't supposed to be trying to see you this fucking soon.

"Girl, please. How is this my fault?" Jade asked as she flopped onto the couch beside you, crossing her legs underneath herself.

"When we talked about Jonathan the other day, I just said what you needed to hear—because you did need to hear it. But I didn't think you would go and contact him that same day and I damn sure didn't think he would drop everything to be on a plane three days later. I'm just as surprised as you."

"I know, Jade. My bad." You sighed, rubbing your temples as her words cut through your defensiveness.

"It's just that it was an impulse decision. After talking to you and then Josh, I decided that maybe I did need to have at least one conversation with him. And I knew if I didn't reach out that night, I never would. If I gave myself more time to think, I knew I would keep ignoring it and ignoring him like I've been doing. But I didn't think he'd want to meet up this fast. Hell, I didn't even think he would have the time to come out here this quick."

The realization hit again, sharp and heavy: Jonathan would be in Florida tomorrow.

Tomorrow?!?

Before everything hit the fan, you had known Jonathan for over ten years. And while in a relationship with him, you got to experience firsthand his relentless life as a pro-wrestler. The traveling, the grueling schedules, and the constant demands. So when you told him Monday night that if he ever found himself in Florida, you'd sit down and talk, it had been a calculated offer. You thought you'd have weeks, maybe even months, to prepare.

Not a few measly days.

You hadn't seen him in two years and now you were just supposed to be ready to see him tomorrow.

"He didn't waste any time, did he?" Jade's voice softened. "But honestly, Y/N, he's been waiting two years for a moment like this. I get his urgency. And I think, despite everything, you want to see him too. Otherwise, you wouldn't have reached out or even opened that letter in the first place. And I'm telling you this as your best friend not as a therapist. I know how much you hate it when I do that. "

You didn't respond allowing her words to sink in.

"And like I already told you I'm glad you read his letter," she continued, nudging you gently, "Look, I know this is quicker than you expected. But you can handle it. Ignoring him hasn't worked and you can't run from everything that reminds you of him for the rest of your life. Now it's time to face it."

You exhaled slowly and sat back against the couch cushions, looking over at Jade.

"You're right" you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper.

"I always am" she smirked, earning the first genuine smile you'd managed in days.

"See? Relax, Y/N. It's just Jonathan. He's not that special to be bothering you like this." Jade added.

Just Jonathan.

Just Jonathan, who you had been in love with since the first time he spoke to you in that hallway when you were sixteen.

Just Jonathan, who helped put the pieces of your heart back together after Trevor shattered it.

And Just Jonathan, who turned around and broke the heart he helped mend all over again. And now, somehow, you were supposed to look him in the eyes tomorrow.

You didn't know how you would manage it, but you would. You had to.

"Now let's figure out the when and where before that man loses his mind," Jade said bringing you back to the task at hand.

"It'll have to be here," you replied, gesturing vaguely to your apartment. You'd thought it over during the rare moments when you weren't internally spiraling.

"Here?" Jade raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah .... we can't talk in public..... not about this. Not with him being Jimmy Uso." The thought of navigating a private conversation in a public space with cameras and fans looming was impossible. You had no desire to even attempt it.

But Jade still looked skeptical.

"What?" you asked.

"I just don't think you should be alone with him after all this time. Suppressed emotions have a way of coming out in messy, unexpected ways. I don't want him to take advantage of your vulnerability."

"What you think I'ma end up in his arms or something?" you scoffed, the idea absurd. You didn't even like Jonathan as a person anymore or at least you didn't think you did.

There was no way you would let him anywhere near you.

"It's a possibility," she said, unflinchingly honest.

"Well I don't plan on that happening," you said firmly.

"People don't usually plan for moments like that. But promise me that you'll stand your ground. You're in control, Y/N. He's been waiting to talk to you for the last two years, not the other way around. Okay?"

"I hear you, Jade. I got it," you told her.

You had already mapped out your plan. You would take a sick day from work tomorrow cause you knew that you needed to devote that whole day to the Jonathan ordeal. Then you would spend the rest of the weekend that you thankfully had off recovering.

You had it under control.

"I got it." You repeated the words, but the more you said them, the more you realized you weren't just trying to convince her.

But still, as unwanted doubts slowly started to settle over you, you picked up your phone and texted Jonathan the address to your apartment and told him he could come by at 9. You had no idea when his plane would land, and you had no desire to ask. But 9 seemed like a reasonable time. It would give you both a chance to prepare for what was coming.

********************************************

Friday morning and afternoon arrived and slid past you in a surreal blur. You busied yourself with errands, cleaning, and futile tasks, desperately trying to keep your mind off the impending reunion. But no matter how hard you fought against it, the thought of seeing Jonathan crept back in during every quiet moment.

And his ceaseless text updates didn’t help. He kept you informed when he checked into the hotel and when he picked up his rental car, each message marking an unwelcomed reminder that he was on his way to you. You begged time to slow down, but before you knew it, the clock read 8:10 p.m. You were sitting at your vanity, staring at your reflection, an anxious storm brewing in your chest.

Jonathan's imminent arrival drew your attention to every detail about yourself. Your hair refused to cooperate; no matter how you adjusted your dress, it didn’t feel right. To make matters worse, you’d somehow convinced yourself to do your makeup, as if Jonathan deserved to see you at your best.

“What are you even doing?” you muttered in frustration, the reflection mirroring your inner turmoil.

Grabbing a makeup wipe, you scrubbed away the foundation, opting for simplicity, just a clear coat of lip gloss and nothing more. You weren’t going to make a special effort for him. Not after everything. Leaving your bedroom, you wandered into the kitchen, where the wine cabinet beckoned to you louder than it had all day. A glass or two might calm your nerves, but you stopped yourself. Emotions were already going to run high tonight, and you didn’t need alcohol amplifying them.

At 8:30, you sat on the couch to wait.

At 8:45, a message from Jade lit up your phone.

Jade 🤞🏾: Good luck, Y/N. I love you, girl. Remember, you’re in control.

By 9:00, your heart was racing. He would be here any minute.

By 9:15, you reassured yourself that it was okay if he was running a little late; you didn’t expect him to knock on your door at 9 on the dot.

But by 9:30, irritation replaced your nerves. After two years of silence and waiting, after flying all the way here, he had the audacity to be late?

By 9:45, the doorbell rang.

Once.

Twice.

Then three more times back to back like someone was leaning on it.

“What the hell?” you muttered, grabbing your phone and opening the Ring camera app.

It was him.

Jonathan hovered unsteadily in front of the camera, a bouquet of roses clutched in his hand, his broad shoulders just as solid as you remembered. As you took in his appearance, your heart twisted. Those familiar, handsome features were marred by glassy, unfocused eyes that told you everything you needed to know.

He was drunk.

The realization hit harder than you liked. That's why he was so late. He was getting drunk?

Two years. Two fucking years of unresolved issues, guilt, and heartbreak, and this was how he chose to show up? Wasted and late?

As you continued to stare at him through the camera, your emotions ricocheted between anger and disappointment.

He rang the doorbell again, swaying slightly as he adjusted the roses, which were now wilting in his grip. For a few seconds, you considered leaving him out there to stew in his own mess. He obviously didn’t care enough about you to show up sober, and part of you felt vindicated by the thought of refusing him entry. It would serve him right after all this time.

Yet the image of him stumbling back to his car in his current state pricked at your conscience. No matter how you felt, you couldn’t let him hurt himself or someone else—or scar his reputation further with another DUI.

So, against your better judgment, you approached the front door and swung it open.

You were too annoyed to say anything first so you and Jonathan stood in a taut silence, locked in a standoff. You glared at him like he was the last person on earth you wanted to see, and he gawked at you as if you were a figment of his imagination.

“You look good” he slurred into the silence his uncared for compliment falling on deaf ears as you just continued to stare at him.

“These… these are for you,” Jonathan thrusted the roses your way, nearly losing his balance. Then, as if something suddenly occurred to him, he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small jewelry box.

“And this,” he mumbled, his voice trailing off.

You took the items silently, your jaw clenched tightly as if trying to contain the flood of emotions threatening to spill. There were a million things you wanted to say, questions to ask, anger to unleash but looking at him now, words felt futile. He wouldn’t understand, not like this.

You hadn’t taken the time to imagine what a reunion with Jonathan would look like but this version would have never crossed your mind. He wasn’t a heavy drinker when you were together; a casual drink on a night out was the extent of it. Witnessing him using alcohol as an escape was not just disappointing but it also hurt your feelings in more ways than you wanted to admit. 

Now it was painfully clear that the conversation he had harbored for two long years couldn’t happen tonight. Not with him in this state. He ruined it. You two couldn’t discuss his cheating and your secret abortion with him like this.

But you still had to deal with him because you weren’t going to allow him to leave your apartment until he was sober.

“Jonathan… come in and sit down,” you pushed the anger aside, grounding yourself in the moment as you opened the door wider to grant him entry. He stumbled past you, knocking over a glass vase on the table, which shattered on impact, sending shards of glass cascading across the floor. You winced at the sound but swallowed the reaction, there was no room for that now.

“I'm sorry,” Jonathan muttered, glancing down at the wreckage he had made. He bent over, trying to gather the bits with unsteady hands, but before you could stop him, he stood back and winced. As you looked on you saw that a few jagged pieces of glass were now embedded in his palm, and your heart sank with unexpected and unwelcomed concern.

“Go sit down, Jon, and don’t move,” you instructed sharply, yet your tone held no anger, just deep and exhausting concern for the man you once loved. And still loved you would come to terms with if you gave yourself time enough to dwell on it. As he slumped onto the couch, you quickly rushed to the bathroom to grab your first aid kit. You placed the roses and jewelry box on the counter as you passed through the kitchen. You were confused about your feelings at this point but somewhere in you was compassion for Jonathan being physically hurt. That’s what you focused on the most.

When you returned to the living room, you settled beside him and reached out for his hand. Jonathan’s gaze roamed your face, searching for something, and he complied when you gently took his wrist. Taking a deep breath, you steeled yourself before using a pair of tweezers to remove the slivers of glass from his palm. You could still feel his eyes on you as you picked up a bottle of antiseptic, dampening cotton balls to clean the small cuts.

“Did you miss me at all, Y/N?” Jonathan’s sudden question caught you off guard, and you paused, just for a brief moment, while you continued bandaging him. But you quickly regained your composure.

“We’re not doing that right now,” you stated flatly, disregarding his question completely as you released his hand.

For a few agonizing minutes, the weight of the silence hung in the air. But then Jade’s words about you being in control came rushing back. With that, you knew you had to take charge of the situation. 

“Look, Jon, you’ve been drinking. I don’t know what possessed you to think showing up here like this was okay, but I don’t want to talk about anything with you right now,” you told him truthfully, your voice steady.

“ I don’t know… I’ll just… I’ll just leave,” he stammered, attempting to rise but you stopped him.

“You’re not going anywhere. First, you’re going to give me your keys,” you declared holding out your hand, unwavering. He dug into his pocket with his uninjured hand and reluctantly dropped the keys into your palm.

“Now you’re going to lay on this couch and sleep it off. I’m going to my room, and we can try this again in the morning. Do you understand me?” you asked, waiting for him to nod sluggishly.

Without exchanging another word with him, you stood to your feet, grabbing a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess he made while the silence between you was overwhelming. You didn’t know what was going through his mind, but you were relieved that even in his intoxicated state, he didn’t pressure you to talk. He seemed to understand that his arrival tonight was laced with disrespect, and deep down, you hoped he recognized how lucky he was that you hadn’t kicked him out.

By the time you retreated to your bedroom, it was only a little past eleven, but you felt utterly drained, knowing that this train wreck between you and Jonathan was just beginning.

You still had tomorrow to face. 

Part 4.1

[jazzyjj]

I actually forgot about V’s addition in this episode, but I was pleasantly surprised when I remembered and thoroughly enjoyed the three together.

But after my daily cruising Tumblr tags and tiktok vids and comments of episode 3 it appears that people’s IQs have lowered to room temperature at an alarming rate.

To be blunt y’all are being dramatic.

Yes, is it nice to see a ship you like have a show dedicated to some time to themselves, however, that does NAWT mean we decide to attack the addition of another member when they join in. Y'all are not body language experts, and y’all do not know these men’s true moods and personalities especially not through a damn tv screen. So please do not come on here with your magnifying glasses and your theories abt how they secretly hate Tae’s addition. They are grown men. They don’t like something, I am sure they will speak up if their alone time is really that important to them especially when it's with someone as close to them as Tae.

Another thing for considering, they are literally never fully alone on this trip anyways, they’ve got 25 cameramen and drones, a hidden bodyguard or two probably-cause every ARMY will not be like that sweet girl in the store-and managers with them the whole time.

I’m trying to see some highlights and instead I gotta see goofy comments calling this a filler episode, calling Taehyung a third wheel, and that vminkook don’t have that good of chemistry together so it throws the episode off.

THE MAKNAE LINE?

CHEMISTRY?

DON’T HAVE?

The three individuals with multiple videos dedicated to said chemistry?

The three goobers whose last 2 braincells are so synced that the hyung line can’t keep up with their shenanigans and just watch from the sidelines?

Yeah, go ahead and log off for me.

You wanna talk abt jikook tags being dry? That’s cause y’all let it be dry. Yall decided to huff and puff in the corner and complain instead of doing any posting. That ain’t got shit to do with Tae. I still saw many cute moments of Jimin and JK.

You wanna be bitter and ignore all the fun moments the three had, how hilariously chaotic they are together, or how nice it was watching them decompress, be my guest. But all this whining? Baby keep that shit on your side of the laptop.

In summation, it is episode 3 of what number?

EIGHT

Which means if we pull out our fingies to count and you secure your thinking cap, that leaves 5 left to enjoy, he’s the only guest YOU WILL LIVE.

[chantsdemarins]

😅Real Villain Training [Tom Hiddleston circa 2012 X Fem.Reader]

Chapter three of Breath of the Æsir is almost here. I’m SO sorry for the wait! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy a very brief Tom story...

Honestly, I pledged to myself, no more Tom stories just focus on Loki. But I think I just can't help it. Especially when slutty inspiration like this photo comes my way (@lokischambermaid and @lokisgoodgirl 😳)

I am humbled by this era of Tom. In 2024 he is a husband/father/seasoned iconic actor in perpetual good cheer, but in 2012, he was a bad boy. As always please reblog and comment if you feel inspired!

Summary: Tom is hanging out with some real jerks for a new role, and he runs into you, literally. Your depression has caused your life to turn a little black and white, could this handsome stranger possibly add some color back? (at least to your cheeks🥵).

Smut factor: I hope...HOT 🔥

(Authors note: I have no concrete proof he was in fact a bad boy so please don't take seriously my young Tom plot themes of drugs and sex, which once again appear here. I could be totally wrong about him. It's art! It's a fabrication! Also, this story does involve mental health!)

I also don't know who would want to be on a tag list for a Tom fic these days! These are a few people who might be interested?? @lokischambermaid @mochie85 @mischief2sarawr @lokisgoodgirl @wheredafandomat @sailorholly @mrs-illyrian-baby @superficialdomina @gigglingtiggerv2 @fictive-sl0th @muddyorbs @tbhiddlestan83 @huntress-artemiss @smolvenger @kikster606 @mjsthrillernp @hiroyukinasukawa

Los Angeles, 2012

That afternoon, the rooftop pool at the Saint Avalon was a pink swirl of bathing beauties in early spring. Tom tried to focus on his deadpan conversation with his agent, but polka dots and silly cocktails danced around him. He pushed his Ray-Bans back into place, his sweat—or perhaps nervousness—causing them to slowly slide off his nose.

"Serious British actor succumbs to being typecast as a Norse sociopath. That's where this is headed, Tom, if we don’t do something, get you something else.” “Do you really want to be known only for Marvel?” he repeated his plea. The words just weren’t sinking in.

Tom laughed and inadvertently tried to change the subject. "Have you been to the La Brea Tar Pits yet, John? It’s wild—10,000 years' worth of dire wolf bones.”

His stare remained galvanized by the poolside girls. They just didn't look like that in London. Number one, the sunshine. Number two, the tans. Number three, well, his girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend, rather—made it hard to look too long at anyone else. So had he ever found himself at a rooftop pool party, he wouldn't have had the chance he was having now.

“Tom, are you paying attention? This is important. You're only here for a week, and we need to move on this role. I need to know if you're a yes.” The truth was, Tom was suddenly filthy rich with his own money for the first time in his life. He really loved being a Norse sociopath and already had big ideas for Loki’s eventual character arc into becoming an anti-hero someday. He had filled three journals on his bedside stand with his ideas for Loki.

His agent tried again, “Just hang out with Giorgio. It’s less than a month. Then the movie should be a very easy shoot. You get to embed yourself with some real hedge fund cats.” Tom’s attention snapped back. “Wait, I like that.” “Right? It’s like if Loki worked on Wall Street.” “Well…” Tom hesitated. He didn’t think Loki would actually ever bore himself that way. Those guys were boring to Tom and to Loki.

His poor agent was right, though. He did need another role. Things had gone so well; filming for the next Avengers movie was starting this summer. If he could find another gig, a time filler, a totally different genre, it really would be the best for his career. “Then a play next,” the agent mused, taking a sip of his own cocktail. “Shakespeare, or something 70s.” “70s? As in the 1570s? Or the 1970s?” “Tom.” “How should I know?” Tom laughed to himself, eyes still canvassing the poolside display around him. His agent leaned across his lawn chair and placed his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “So, you’ll do it?”

Two Weeks Later

Deep down, he knew he didn’t have the dissociation required for the job. He was too corporeal, too embodied. Years of being a long-distance runner and a trained athlete had fastened his mind, heart, and soul firmly into his muscles. He clearly wouldn’t be able to hide his feelings in his highly emotive, sensitive body. That was the first thing he noticed about the guys he was forced to hang out with for this role. They were covered up with their suits and sexist jokes. It was like they had Hadrian’s Wall around them. Which was, in fact, what exactly led to his sudden departure from the bar at Rue 23.

He had been embedded with short and loud Glen, buzz-cut Ellis, and the tall and lanky, just like him, Brad Nelson. There were a few others, but they were too milquetoast to be memorable. Role be damned. He left so fast the thick glass door almost hit a nice young couple as he bolted into the cold Los Angeles spring night.

He wasn’t dressed right; in his haste to leave London, he didn’t remember that California got into the 40s after the sun went down. He didn’t even pack a suit coat. Thank God he remembered to grab his leather pack from under the bar. It contained exactly five cigarettes, a finicky Zippo, his aftershave, a white t-shirt, and a travel toothbrush. There might also be a rolled-up Popular Mechanics magazine from the Burbank airport, something he never would be caught dead reading at Heathrow.

He also hadn’t done so much coke since he was in college. Why was LA always so incredibly cliché? He couldn’t blame Luke. He couldn’t blame anyone but himself for this role. He said yes when he was distracted. He was in over his head. They had hired these real blokes to make sure Tom looked authentic when they started filming next month, and given his intense drive for perfection, he had agreed that it was “brilliant” of the casting director to force the eight of them to spend these weeks in Los Angeles and one week in Manhattan, in a true immersive centrifuge of shallow materiality.

The night spun around him, a neon ball of yarn, teasing open his pupils until his eyes were black and not at all blue. As he walked, he ran his large hands down the surface of his body, the material of his shirt feeling like a fancy pillowcase from a boutique hotel.

One finger lingered over his jawline, tracing it as he brought his hands back up to his face. Engrossed in the comfort of his form a moment too long, he was distracted once again. This part of LA seemed to always be full of clusters of locals and tourists, laughing and talking. He was unfortunately moving against the flow of the crowd, a wayward salmon when he almost ran straight into you.

“Watch where you're going!” you yelled, dropping your purse onto the dirty LA sidewalk. It opened enough for your things to tumble out. Tom immediately stopped and bent down to help you, but you batted his hands away. “What the hell? I can pick up my own damn Chapstick,” you scolded. “Ma’am, I am so sorry, I am obviously not from here, and I am a little overwhelmed,” he rattled off. “Why is that obvious?” “My accent, of course.” “I didn’t honestly notice,” you spoke as you inspected the tall man’s face with squinting eyes.

You, of course, did immediately notice the timbre of his voice, his height, and the buttons on his tight shirt which looked like they were in the process of unbuttoning themselves. “Would you believe I’ve been doing coke all night with a bunch of Wall Street assholes at the Rue 23, and I had to get the fuck out of there,” he continued, not sure if you were listening, but you were definitely looking at him, so he continued.

“So now I am wandering the streets of Beverly Hills, and I haven’t the foggiest how the rest of my night will go.” You shuffled your feet for a moment before speaking. You had been heading home after a long day at work. You felt genuinely unprepared for navigating a handsome foreigner in the right direction. Yet there was a certain appeal to a man suddenly without his ship or his crew, so to speak. So you didn’t immediately walk away.

He had been shuffled from the airport to the bar in a hired car, he tried to explain, and his sense of direction bordered on problematic. Further, his flip phone was really only good for texting, and that even took way too long most days. He really did seem high, overwhelmed, and a little lost. He also seemed the type unable to handle any silence in a conversation.

“Do you live far?” he said after suffering through 30 seconds of no discourse. “It’s LA, everything is far.” “Fair enough,” Tom muttered sheepishly, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt, which were still somehow unbuttoning themselves. He thought he had bought the right size shirt. Maybe not.

You realized that if you were to ask this too-high, too-hot British man back to your apartment, you would inevitably cave and end up sleeping with him just because he caught you in this particular moment of your life. It was an in-between time. You weren't quite your old self and your new self that you'd been working so hard on, hadn't emerged yet.

“Want to grab something to eat?” You finally offered a neutral segue. That seemed to be just what the man needed to hear. His demeanor calmed. “Oh sure, yes, I could go for a big American cheeseburger, honestly.” “Okay then, let’s go to Patty’s on Vine, we can walk,” you said as you pulled at his shirt to turn him toward the right direction. He bristled at the feeling of your touch.

His whole body was even more sensitive than usual. You looked like the queen of the ancient British Iceni to him. In truth, he didn’t much care for the California look. He loved that you appeared out of nowhere and you looked like Boudica, not like Gwyneth Paltrow. Even though he was sure he heard she was nice. RDJ seemed to really love her.

The diner where you were headed was the second-tier after-hours hang, so it wasn’t populated with the usual crowd, not yet at least. You had some time before you would be inundated, and perhaps before someone would recognize him, which you still did not. You could ask him, of course. Although, sometimes in Los Angeles, the worst part is knowing who someone is.

Although Tom being Tom was unable to resist personal questions. “Tell me a little bit about yourself, just a little,” he had to ask as the night air propelled him quickly down the sidewalk. You considered telling him about your job, but it was just how you paid the bills. Your passions were your passions and not for a stranger. So you decided to be a little goth. It couldn't hurt.

“I have something like anhedonia, I suppose,” you finally said. Tom seemed to know what you meant right away. “The inability to feel?” He spoke. “More classically refined, which results in numbness, making capturing interior somatic sensations nearly impossible,” you clarified. “Sounds like you are depressed,” Tom flattened out your creative retelling of your current state. “Maybe,” although you weren't sure of his simple label. "You think it will pass?" Tom continued, ever the optimist.

You considered one way to try and test if this state you'd been in could possibly change, would be to see if he could provoke feelings of passion or at least some kind of low-grade horniness. You’d been feeling functionally blank for a while now.

He was stunning, after all.

He seemed game for anything, his amphetamine grin taking up the majority of his handsome face. He looked so lovely under the hanging light in your dingy booth. You ate the two-egg special you ordered and watched him devour his American cheeseburger with genuine joy.

“So, you're here to practice for a new part?” You sincerely tried to keep the conversation flowing despite the growing desire to test your theory. “Yes, they want me to branch out. In my career, there’s the fear I am already 'type-casted,' I guess you could say.” “Type-casted? So early on?”

He looked young to you. Possibly younger than you actually. “Yes, I had a big role as a villain, it really blew up, but, he's like a mythological comic book one. I am misunderstood mostly. I mean my character, not me.” "Sure." You nodded in understanding and agreed even if you didn’t quite pick up what he was putting down. You wondered if he had ever seen 'The Last Starfighter.' A favorite movie of yours, you rarely shared with anyone else. Or had he been in that? Your mind wandered. You really didn't recognize him, but you also didn't want to offend him by this fact.

“So how would this role be redefining your abilities? If you are playing a heartless hedge fund dude, isn’t that also a kind of villain? Maybe that is why you got this part.” Tom pondered your insight. He again fell into overthinking and was only a text away from bailing on the entire endeavor. He was becoming that kind of guy, emotionally uneven under his elite veneer.

“I guess they feel like I don’t have the chops to be a 'real world' baddie.” “I needed more practice.” “You don’t?” you said very timidly, suddenly you weren’t hungry anymore. You gently pushed your plate aside so you could focus.

You realized his bromance compadres would find him eventually. Another LA truth: it was hard to get truly lost for long. You had been studying his face during the conversation. His pale complexion was slowly becoming flushed in small increments. Was it shyness or a hidden boldness he was bursting to demonstrate, you couldn't tell.

You had worn your espadrilles today, maybe it wasn’t the right season yet, but they always went so well with your outfit-a flowery dress from H&M. Gently and playfully, you kicked one of them off your foot, making a soft thud. Tom dipped his eyes beneath the table for only a moment and brought them back to you, a new flash of crimson emerging. Why were you taking off your shoes? Maybe your feet hurt from the walk?

He picked up his water and chugged almost all of it.

Your right leg lifted up and found purchase exactly between his, landing on the soft seat. Tom chuckled nervously and grabbed your foot. “Just what are you doing?” “I thought you were in training to be a real villain. Or did I misunderstand that?” You teased. Tom’s sincerity and earnestness were effulgent. “Oh no, I am, I really want the part, I need this role.” Suddenly when the idea of something illicit going on beneath the table loomed, he was not reticent about this new role. “Then you better continue to practice.” You laughed, your own smile forming across your face. “How long do we have until they find you?” You inched your foot closer to his crotch.

Tom took a deep breath in and pulled out his flip phone eyes squinting, trying to see the rectangle text banner across the tiny screen. He held the phone up to you. “Can you read this at all?” You grabbed it from him, feeling his hand shaking a little. It was charming. He was nervous.

You read the tiny screen aloud, “Not really, something about where are you at…you wanker, we are about to call your agent." It did say exactly that, and you wondered if possibly Tom was throwing away this role. Were you watching him collapse his career before your eyes? “Are you one for self-sabotage Tom?” The question seemed to catch him off guard. Maybe no one had asked him so bluntly. “Maybe,” he said after a long minute of typing something on the seemingly minute phone with his long fingers and even larger hands. “Just like I am possibly depressed," you offered. He looked up and sat his phone down. “Yes, I think so. Just like that.”

Incoming

Just then the waitress came by filled your water glasses and gave you another quick refill of coffee. Your chosen sobriety was a strange foil to Tom’s imbibed stimulant cocktail which showed no sign of waning. “So, are we on?” He finally said after biting his bottom lip, for what seemed like a year, until it was slightly puffy.

“For what? A staring contest?” You offered, laughing nervously too, your foot still stationed between his thighs. You wondered what you could accomplish at this hour with the looming threat of an incursion at any moment.

The glimmer in his dilated orbs registered that Tom was now aligned in a mission of testing the perpetuity of your anhedonic state. Suddenly under the table, you felt his long legs spread yours apart, like opening a long-closed window that had been painted over.

You gasped but didn’t say anything. He laughed and widened his legs further. You moved your eyes to watch him under the table, his hand reaching down to adjust his cock, which was obviously becoming hard.

At that moment you wanted to jump over to his side of the booth, you wanted to concede and take him to your far away apartment in embarrassing Marina Del Rey.

Tom went silent and finally let go of your bare foot, he had been holding it so hard with his other hand, that you were sure it would be bruised. You immediately placed it on his now impossibly hard cock, tenting his pants obscenely. Honestly, you’d never given a “foot job” before and only seen something like this in a French film once. You had no idea what you were doing.

You slowly began to move your foot up and down his length, which was quite impressive and required more force than you had anticipated. You curled your toes around him to try and create more friction, dragging your heel just at the base.

You placed your hands on the edge of the diner seat so you could put some real weight into getting him off. That seemed to work, and Tom let out a guttural moan. He quickly grabbed your water glass and drank it in addition to his own.

“Should I stop?” You let yourself wonder out loud. “Are you crazy? No.” Was Tom’s quick reply. “Does this feel good?” “Fuck yes.” His voice was breathy, and he shifted in his seat, daring to look around at the customers, but none showed any sign of noticing anything other than themselves. “But this isn’t fair,” he spoke again softly, panting. “How so?” “Because I am um, I am receiving.” “Aren’t you supposed to be a selfish cold surface-level junior business asshole?” “Yes.” “Then this is what they do, they get foot jobs in diners, amongst other perks of course,” you laughed. “Shit, you’re right,” Tom barely squeaked out.

Just then the diner door opened, and you could see the dim faces of the guys he had been partying with. They finally found him. “Don’t look now but your Republican friends have arrived.” Tom’s flush became pale. “Should I stop?” You checked in again. “No.” His response was as clear as mid-day.

So, you increased your speed, you took a deep breath. You were so turned on at this point. You were positive there would be a wet spot on the cracked vinyl seat. You lifted your skirt up further. Tom noticed and peered beneath the table again. He saw your hand brush past your underwear and a finger curl inside the lace trim. You matched his erratic breathing to your motions as you fucked yourself intently. His eyes were glued to you, his fists almost punching into the flimsy placemats. You laughed to yourself about the chances of you both coming in public, surely, he wouldn’t, or you couldn’t.

You were about to mention that perhaps you should stop. When suddenly Tom let out a muffled cry. His breath hitched. You could feel moisture beneath the bottom of your toes as you brought your foot back to the tip of his generous cock once more. “Ah, I see,” you laughed. "Well looks like we are done here." There was no more time to discuss what just happened. The bros had spotted him and you and made their way to your back corner.

Tom closed his eyes in what looked like a silent prayer. He had just had one of the best orgasms of his life. The short blond one with cropped hair spoke up, “Hiddleston, where the fuck have you been, your agency was about to call the cops, which would have been lame.”

“Hiddleston,” you said his surname out loud. Realizing you never got his last name. Tom looked at you with both lust and remorse. Then turned back to the assholes. “You found me, good work,” he said assuredly. “Well we gotta go dick we have a strip club that closes at 3am and it’s in the contract that we take you there.”

Tom slowly got up and used one of his long fingers to expertly untuck that white button-down shirt to conceal the mess you had both made. He looked your way, the pale blue of his eyes returning.

You exchanged numbers for the pleasantry of it, as the assholes looked on impatiently, probably wondering why Tom was wasting his time on a girl who looked like Boudica, but that's just what assholes do you remembered. Although you really didn’t expect to hear from him again. To your surprise right before dawn, perhaps as he was leaving said strip club, a text came over your Blackberry.

“I hope you felt something, I know I did.” Shit.

You did feel something, a lot of things actually. Tom had brought something back to the solemnly plain bagel of your life. You quickly wrote back.

"Don't let the bros see you texting me Tom, you laughed knowing he was probably squinting and barely able to see your words. You picture all of them looking over his shoulder.

"They went home. Can I come over? I feel like we aren't done quite yet. My asshole-in-training self expires at sunrise and I turn back into the real me. Is that okay?" You blinked a few times just to make sure you saw that correctly. "So you're actually Cinderella," you laughed nervously.

You managed to type your address and push send before pulling your covers over your head and screaming quietly enough to not wake up your still-slumbering roommates. You then looked around your room in quiet delightful horror, you had about 30 minutes to hide all your dirty clothes from the past three months under your bed...

[starjaeyun]

wrong number

summary : aside from your brother and best friends' fangirls, what annoys you the most is boys asking for your number, but lucky for you, your brother gave you permission to give his number instead

pairing : suna rintarou x fem! reader

warnings : slight angst (probably), fluff, crack (i try to be funny pls don't judge), profanity, harassment (being forced to give out your personal information by strangers)

status : coming soon

taglist : open, just send an ask or leave a comment

(block the tag #[wrong number : starjaeyun] if you do not want to see posts related to this smau)

the plastics 😘 | ✨ the power of friendship ✨

zero. my name is hajime iwaizumi

one. iwa-chan is bbg

one, filler chapter. hajime iwaizumi is a he?!

two. jersey number 10 😍

three. can't you see that i'm the one who understands u 😖

four. suna is no longer bitchless 🙌

five. stream speak now (tv)

- titles of unpublished parts are subject to change adding and deleting parts are also expected to happen

[blacksailskmeme]

Hi there piratefam!

Happy Black Sails Netflix day! 🥳 🏴‍☠️🥳

A quick reminder that we have a little Black Sails Kink Meme running right now (live up til the end of Summer 2024!) The link above is to the event collection of fills and below I'm posting some more info about how to participate if you haven't yet heard about it! :D <3

--

Premise--

I’m encouraging as informal and low stress/pressure of an atmosphere as possible here. Back in The Day when LiveJournal Kink Memes were common, it was very typical to see a prompt put up and filled within an hour. It doesn’t have to be polished, it doesn’t have to make logistical sense, it just has to fill the prompt as best as you can, sexily! It’s supposed to be fun. A bunch of fun, raunchy kink and smut to roll around in as a fandom. 🥳 🥳

So yeah, first thing to expect, it’s basically ALL PWP (porn without plot). Not to say that someone can’t write a full plot epic if they like, do whatever you like, but in my experience, a 4am fugue state smut fill written in a sweaty haze is kind of, the spirit of the thing. We’re creating ficlets, snapshots, tasty treats of smut with as little pressure to make it in any way polished as possible. Please think of this as, hmmm, a little fun writing exercise you do before you go back to your Big Serious Work, if that helps. We are letting loose, we are having fun, we are being deliciously, joyously, unrepentantly filthy with it! The tagline for the event is: “Get High, Jerk Off Three Times, and Write Me a Warmup :DD”

Literally ask for whatever smut you want~~ This is your chance, toss it into the pot! It will be tagged accordingly when posted if it’s filled, so live your truth, chase your bliss, know no shame, no one can see you~~

--

Rules--

–This is an 18 plus event, please, as all of the content will be Explicit. 

–It is also a Black Sails Only Event, please no crossover prompts or fills. However, AU of all types are encouraged with our favorite pirates.

–All ships, all kinks, are welcome for submission, and the fill will then be tagged appropriately. If you have any questions on how to tag something, or just want another pair of eyes to confirm, you can always DM me <3

–Fills must be 500 words minimum of fic. There is no maximum and the fill is allowed to be WIP if you intend to write more chapters later. I would encourage that the content of the prompt be IN the first chapter at least before submission to the collection.

–We’re Gonna Be Nice and Civil!! No ship bashing, no kink shaming, we’re all mature adults here. If you don’t like something, then don’t fill it, don’t reblog it, don’t read it, pretend you do not see it. If you don’t like it, it’s not for you! 

--

Logistics--

For prompts-- you may submit ANON ASK PROMPTS to this blog. I will publish them with a number and a link to the collection. If you like one of the prompts, simply post it through the collection with its corresponding number and then that AO3 link to your fill will be reblogged underneath the original ask prompt. It is helpful when submitting a prompt to give details that are important to you, and the prompt filler will do their best with it. <3 So, I suggest giving a ship specification up front, maybe a vague timeline (season 1, season 2, etc), and then the kinks you want to see with a short description.

For fills-- There is NO CLAIMING PROCESS NECESSARY! If you see a prompt that strikes your fancy, you are IMMEDIATLEY encouraged and free to fill it, there is NO LIMIT ON FILLS for each prompt!

Both prompt submissions and fills will be open simultaneously through the entire span of the event.

The entire collection is marked Anonymous, which means any work submitted to it will be posted Anon. There is no option you need to worry about checking to guarantee this.

After the event is closed, if you want to then de-anon your work, that is your prerogative. However, it will mean you must remove the work from the collection, as the collection itself will forever and always remain anonymous.

As more prompts come in, I will continue to assign them numbers and post them using the tag #2024BSKMemePrompts. As they come in, fills will be reblogged under their prompt using the tag #2024BSKMemeFills.

(PS: If you submit your fill and do not see it immediately, please remember it’s just me handling the organization and I might be asleep. But rest assured just as SOON as I get the notification on the collection I will publish it on Tumblr.)

Information regarding posting to AO3 collections can be found here. The expanded guidelines and rules for fills can be found here.

If you are unsure of something, tags, anything at all, or if you have questions I haven't covered here: please do not hesitate to reach out to me either through the event blog or my main @jaynovz. I will respond to questions as soon as I’m able :DD

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE, HAVE FUN IN THE SPLASH ZONE OF SMUT AND KINK~~ 🎉🎉

[jaynovz]

Expanded Info for Black Sails Kink Meme 2024

Hi there!

Since there has been a sufficient amount of interest for this idea, let me explain a little further how I think this will work and general guidelines–

I’m encouraging as informal and low stress/pressure of an atmosphere as possible here. Back in The Day when LiveJournal Kink Memes were common, it was very typical to see a prompt put up and filled within an hour. It doesn’t have to be polished, it doesn’t have to make logistical sense, it just has to fill the prompt as best as you can, sexily! It’s supposed to be fun. A bunch of fun, raunchy kink and smut to roll around in as a fandom. 🥳 🥳

So yeah, first thing to expect, it’s basically ALL PWP (porn without plot). Not to say that someone can’t write a full plot epic if they like, do whatever you like, but in my experience, a 4am fugue state smut fill written in a sweaty haze is kind of, the spirit of the thing. We’re creating ficlets, snapshots, tasty treats of smut with as little pressure to make it in any way polished as possible. Please think of this as, hmmm, a little fun writing exercise you do before you go back to your Big Serious Work, if that helps. We are letting loose, we are having fun, we are being deliciously, joyously, unrepentantly filthy with it! The tagline for the event is: “Get High, Jerk Off Three Times, and Write Me a Warmup :DD”

A prompt might say, for example– “MaxAnne, s2, would love to see the girls get slippery wet with some period sex, bonus if one or both eats the other out while she’s menstruating.” 

Pretty standard stuff, nothing that off the wall from my perspective, however, some folks might feel shy about asking for it for whatever reasons and so the anonymous format frees ppl up to ask for anything from: “Midshipman James McGraw getting caned in pre-canon by his superiors” to, idk, “full tentacle-y type oviposition porn where someone is being forced to come over and over again while being implanted with eggs by some giant plant beast on Skeleton Island (probably Silver).”

Literally ask for whatever smut you want~~ This is your chance, toss it into the pot! It will be tagged accordingly when posted if it’s filled, so live your truth, chase your bliss, know no shame, no one can see you~~

It is helpful when submitting a prompt to give details that are important to you, and the prompt filler will do their best with it. <3 So, I suggest giving a ship specification up front, maybe a vague timeline (season 1, season 2, etc), and then the kinks you want to see with a short description. Sort of like the MaxAnne period sex I gave an example of above.

Logistics and Structure of Submissions–

I have created a sideblog called @blacksailskmeme through which, once submissions are live (it will be open to accept prompts hopefully in March 2024), you may submit ANON ASK PROMPTS. I will publish them with a number and a link to the collection. If you like one of the prompts, simply post it through the collection with its corresponding number and then that AO3 link to your fill will be reblogged underneath the original ask prompt.

Simple as that! 

Follow the Event Blog, or the tag #2024BSKMemeFills in order to keep tabs on when prompts are filled. 

This makes it very easy for me and yall both, as there is no claiming process to trouble ourselves with. As many fills as are written are allowed for each prompt, simply write whatever speaks to you and I’ll be able to track the fills by the notifs on the collection. :DD

As of now, I’m planning to open prompts in March 2024 and keep the collection and blog running for prompts and fills both up through the end of Summer 2024. To respect the spirit of the event, all fills and prompts MUST be anonymous. Edit for clarification: The entire collection is marked Anonymous, which means any work submitted to it will be posted Anon. There is no option you need to worry about checking to guarantee this. I apologize for the initial confusing language, I have been learning as I go.

It still stands that if, after the event is closed, you want to then de-anon your work, that is your prerogative. However, it will mean you must remove the work from the collection, as the collection itself will forever and always remain anonymous.

Rules–

–This is an 18 plus event, please, as all of the content will be Explicit. 

–It is also a Black Sails Only Event, please no crossover prompts or fills. However, AU of all types are encouraged with our favorite pirates.

–All ships, all kinks, are welcome for submission, and the fill will then be tagged appropriately. If you have any questions on how to tag something, or just want another pair of eyes to confirm, you can always DM me <3

–Fills must be 500 words minimum of fic. There is no maximum and the fill is allowed to be WIP if you intend to write more chapters later. I would encourage that the content of the prompt be IN the first chapter at least before submission to the collection.

–We’re Gonna Be Nice and Civil!! No ship bashing, no kink shaming, we’re all mature adults here. If you don’t like something, then don’t fill it, don’t reblog it, don’t read it, pretend you do not see it. If you don’t like it, it’s not for you! 

If I haven’t covered everything here, or if you’re unsure about something, feel free to reach out to me either through the event blog or through @jaynovz <3 Also, if you’d like to help me out with the event, hit me up as well.

Thank you!

[see-the-fandom-imagines]

What's in it for me?

Chapter 9

Chapter 1     Masterlist

Pairing: Kyouya Ootori x Reader Author: see-the-fandom-imagines   Warnings: Kyouya in a bad mood, other than that mostly cute fluff, filler Author’s Note: Sorry, this one is rather short, but the next 3 chapters will follow suit, now that I figured out the issue my tumblr account seemed to have had! Tag List: @radical-bunny, @redsakura101​, @ellouisa17​

Link to Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46325452/chapters/116633701

You had excused yourself to bed not too long after, even though it wasn’t that late yet, but you couldn’t stop thinking about what Miwako said. “He is taking really good care of you, isn’t he?” You bit your lip, thinking for a while, your fingers searching for your phone in your pocket. No matter what, you should call him and thank him again for the trip. And that he hadn’t told Miwako about the incident. Probably. Just to thank him. That was the only reason you’d call him now. The clock on your phone told you that it was barely past ten, which probably wasn’t too late. And if it was, he didn’t have to pick up. In fact, something told you he wouldn’t, if you remembered how deep he had slept in Okinawa. You dialed the number and listened to the beep. It dialed exactly three times before he picked up. “(Y/n)?” He had saved your number. Well, of course he had. He probably had a million contacts in that phone. “Did something happen?” “Oh”, you found your voice again. “No, no. All fine. I just… wanted to apologize again and… thank you.” “What for?” “Well, for one that you didn’t tell my aunt about what happened.” “Of course. She would have never let you return to our club if I had told her.” “Also, she would have possibly murdered me, and Mori and you trying to help me would have been in vain.” You had said this as a joke, but the other end of the line stayed silent for a while. “I didn’t do anything”, he finally said, words cut short. He almost sounded bitter about it. “No, that’s not true. You called the medic and all. And I never explicitly apologized to you personally.” It was silent again. “So… I am sorry for worrying you, Kyouya.” “I wasn’t worried.” “Well then, I apologize for causing you all that trouble.” You heard him exhale through his nose on the other end of the line. “Apology accepted.” Neither of you knew what to say for a moment, but you did not want to hang up yet either. “So, you were right about Tamaki winning in the end, huh?” “Were you actually doubting me?” “Oh, of course not, I would never.” “Why do I not believe you?” “Because you just got lucky that’s all.” You heard him chuckle. “Lucky?” “So lucky.” You smiled at the phone. It felt really good to be joking around with him like that. You were happy that you had found a friend in the dark-haired boy, even if he would probably never feel the same way about you that you felt about him. You didn’t need him to. As long as he was your friend you could be happy. “I am still wondering where Mori-senpai got that harpoon from, though.” Like this you talked a bit more about the past weekend when you suddenly heard Miwako getting ready for bed and noticed the time. “Oh no”, you whispered, and Kyouya picked up on it, immediately. “All good?” “Yes, yes, I just noticed how late it is. Sorry”, you apologized again. “First, I wake you and now I won’t let you sleep. Again.” You heard him chuckle and it made your heart beat a little faster. “You can make up for it.” Your cheeks flushed hot at these words, but you tried to play it cool. “Aha? How?” “Be creative.” “If I am correct, you still owe me, my dear Kyouya.” “Very well, in that case, I guess I shall forgive you this time.” “Too generous.” “But yes, I should go to bed, too.” “Well, goodnight then, Kyouya.” “Goodnight. And… (y/n)?” You placed the phone back to your ear, you had almost been ready to hang up. “Yes?” “Happy Birthday.” And with these words he hung up the phone, leaving you with the phone on your ear, your mouth slightly agape as you realized he was the third person in your life who had ever remembered your birthday.

[revelale]

TOA Anniversary Munday!

Celebrating TOA and the people who contribute to make our group what it is.

Repost, don't reblog. Only fill in what you feel comfortable sharing!

Happy anniversary, TOA! Here's to many more years spent together.

tagging: you? :0)

Name: lilly!

Pronouns: she / they, big they though!

Birthday (no year): april 4th!

Where are you from? What is your time zone? pst, lmao. gmt-8, i think?

Roleplay experience: roughly like 20 years now? lmao, cringe.

Got any pets? yeah, my little buppy, max. he's a demon.

Favorite time of year: winter!

Some interests and things you like: cooking, baking, rhythm games, sleeping, lmao.

Some funfacts & trivia about you: i'm double-jointed in one hand; i tend to only bake cookies in batches of like 7 dozen or more; i've killed at least like six different succulents this year alone; every so often, i'll think about spider-man and its various iterations and fully forget what i was doing before i started thinking about it.

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? the more recent persona games, a truly insane number of otomes, i still have not finished yakuza 0, pokemon, dress-up games, lmao,,,,,

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: dragon, dragonite!

How did you get into Fire Emblem? ......... wanted another dating sim real bad and my friend told me to play awakening please do not judge me—

What Fire Emblem games have you played? everything post-awakening, lmao,,,,, except for sov, which continues to elude me in completion for reasons beyond my understanding

First Fire Emblem game: awakening!

Favorite Fire Emblem game: would it be bad if i said none of them—well, okay. technically, i think an awful lot about fates, but i don't necessarily think it's my favorite? ..... but i do think about it a lot.

Any Fire Emblem crushes? nnnnnnot that i can think of?

If you’ve played the following games, who was your first S support? wwww, awakening was chrom ( by accident ), then olivia ( intentionally lmao ); fates was takumi; three houses was claude lel; engage was pandreo, to no one's surprise.

Favorite Fire Emblem class: KINSHI KNIGHT NATION RISE!!!!

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class? villager, and i would have died four times before you recruit me.

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? golden deer, probably, lmfao.

If you were an Engage character, which Emblem would you Engage with? none, i'm firmly of the belief i'm an ultra npc.

How did you find TOA? chuu! had severe 3h brainrot, and chuu already was in the group and told me it was like full of people who didn't need me to be Online All The Time! it's funny because i ended up not even apping for someone from 3h either, lmao.

Current TOA muses: pandreo!

Who was your first TOA muse? If you don’t have them anymore, could you see yourself picking them up again? cynthia, my silly little horse girl, lmao. i always think about picking her up, but it's always a debate of if i've done enough on her or not. easily my favorite character to pick up and start running with, though.

Have you had any other TOA muses? shigure, lon'qu, CONSTANCE VON NUVELLE, m!byleth, shiro, kiragi,,,,, i think that's it, actually? i don't remember any of my other ones, oopsie, lmao.

Do you think you have a type of character you gravitate towards? i tend to generally write characters in my wheelhouse, though i think i have deviations now and again lmao. like, who would think i'd write shigure, right? but, mostly cheerful characters, i think. mood-makers, the kind of people who would set a scene, but also be enough of a backseat player to the driving force where any protagonist or antagonist would take up the reins more comfortably? i think they tend to get written off as genki or filler characters, so i like kind of prodding at their insecurities and seeing what makes them tick instead.

What do you believe you enjoy writing the most? lmao, lbr i'm made for the clown show. nonsensical moments, increasingly strange meet and greets? but, i like doing big establishing moments that suspend what you know about my characters at face value to explore what's deeper in there. i'll slowburn friendship, idgaf; that's my shit.

Favorite TOA-related memory: lel, team justice is still a highlight in my memory from l&k, but i also remember this very specific combat sequence i wrote with rai in the first major lore event with felix and cynthia that was sick as hell to do! ....... also, probably every piemageddon. it is funny seeing even the serious characters fear for their lives / get uber maniacal in a ridiculous situation.

Got any delusions that didn’t see the light of day in TOA that you’d like to share? do not look behind the curtain, lmao.

[kammartinez]

By Kyle Chayka

In May, I was confronted with a robot version of my writer self. It was made, at my request, by a Silicon Valley startup called Writer, which specializes in building artificial-intelligence tools that produce content in the voice of a particular brand or institution. In my case, it was meant to replicate my personal writing voice. Whereas a model like OpenAI’s ChatGPT is “trained” on millions of words from across the Internet, Robot Kyle runs on Writer’s bespoke model with an extra layer of training, based on some hundred and fifty thousand words of my writing alone. Writer’s pitch is that I, Human Kyle, can use Robot Kyle to generate text in a style that sounds like mine, at a speed that I could only dream of. Writer’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Waseem Alshikh, recently told me that the company’s goal is to use A.I. to “scale content and scale language.” For more than a month now, I have been experimenting with my literary automaton to see how well it accomplishes this task. Or, as Robot Kyle put it when I asked him to comment on the possibility of replacing me: “How could a machine generate the insights, observations, and unique perspectives that I provide as a human?”

Writer is one of several new startups that are attempting to apply emerging A.I. technology to the onerous task of writing. Like many technological innovations, writing robots are meant to create efficiency, particularly for businesses that have to produce large amounts of iterative text. Writer has relationships with companies such as the consulting firm Accenture, the technology company Intuit, and the lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret; commissions for customized models run in the seven figures. (Mine was created as an experiment, free of charge, without some of the intensive features that a corporation’s version would include.) With the help of Writer’s tools, the company hopes, a smaller number of human writers assisted by machines will accomplish the work of many, cutting down costs and increasing productivity in the composition of everything from product descriptions and tweets to C.E.O. messages, investors’ memos, and blog-post headlines. In a March report, Goldman Sachs concluded that three hundred million full-time jobs worldwide are vulnerable to this form of A.I. automation, the majority of them desk jobs. Alshikh speaks of the service as a kind of assembly line for language. “We had the Industrial Revolution; now we have this,” he said.

The looming presence of my personal A.I. model has indeed left me feeling a bit like an artisanal carpenter facing down a factory-floor buzz saw. Should I embrace being replaced and proactively automate my own job before someone else does? Could Robot Kyle help me write better, cleaner, faster? It seemed to think so. When I asked it to describe the long-term effects of machine-generated writing, Robot Kyle wrote, “Writers should not fear AI, but rather embrace it as a tool that can facilitate their craft, driving creativity and innovation instead of replacing it.” What, exactly, does Writer mean by the label “writer”? Our digitized world runs on filler text: avalanches of words and phrases written to optimize Web sites for search engines, to use as tags on social-media posts, and to employ in marketing newsletters that spam in-boxes. May Habib, the C.E.O. and the other co-founder of Writer, told me that the platform’s tools will automate the writing of “summaries, metadata, ads, distribution copy—all the stuff you spend time doing.” Victoria’s Secret, for instance, is using Writer to automate product copy for its underwear and swimsuits, but Writer promises something more sophisticated than mass-produced marketplace listings or formulaic e-mail blasts. Its core product, as Habib put it, is “automated insight extraction”—another way of describing the task of thinking, which is arguably the purpose of writing in the first place. As Joan Didion wrote, in 1976, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking.” A.I. programs such as Writer aim to supplant that process.

In 1984, Steve Jobs famously described the computer as a “bicycle for the mind.” The experience of using Writer is something like riding an electric bike: step on the pedal and you’ll go much faster than the gears of the unassisted human mind could. The program’s interface features a prompt window on the left and a text box on the right. With a one-sentence prompt—let’s call it the seed of a thought—Writer can produce paragraphs of text in an instant. If you want more on the same subject, simply press the Command and Return keys simultaneously and another few sentences appear. Yet, as with any large language model, Writer cannot guarantee that the results will be factual or sensical. Writing without the aid of a generative machine might be frustrating, even excruciating, but it does encourage productive logic. If writing is thinking, ordering one’s ideas, generating text with A.I. may be a way to avoid thinking. What is writing without thinking? Maybe it is the definition of that deadening euphemism: content. As I tried to incorporate Writer into my writing process, I felt a little like a gambler pulling a slot-machine lever over and over, in hope of finding the lucky combination of phrases that communicated something like what I wanted to say. At one point, I asked Robot Kyle to write the beginning of this article. It came up with this:

For centuries, humans have looked to technology to automate mundane tasks and free up time for creativity and leisure. But with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative text tools, automation is encroaching on the jobs of writers and journalists.

This draft sounded like an undergrad term paper, but with the kernel of an intriguing argument: technology promises leisure but often fails to deliver it. I edited the prompt to request a new lead with a more exciting, literary tone that captures the emotional experience of encountering oneself in robot form. This time, the A.I. concocted a sci-fi narrative:

I stood in the lobby of the Silicon Valley tech lab of Robodot, watching a shiny, humanoid robot shuffle towards me. It was roughly the same height as me, with a sleek metal covering and glowing blue eyes. In that moment, I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of dread: The robot had been created to replace me.

Of course, Robodot is not a real company, and Robot Kyle is enclosed in a Web browser like a genie in its bottle, not wandering about like a literary R2-D2. The sense of dread isn’t far off, though. You can ask ChatGPT to mimic a particular writer’s voice, but it rarely gets close. Writer, by comparison, can be unnervingly effective. At times Robot Kyle seemed to be reflecting fragments of my mind back at me, mimicking some of the semi-subconscious tics that constitute my writing. It wrote, for instance, that generative A.I. “asks whether the meaning of language is still rooted in the human experience, or whether it is a commodity to be mined and manipulated, a tool to be used in whatever way the artificers of this new technology choose.” In this sentence, I find several embarrassing hallmarks of my writing. First, there is the preponderance of commas, with sentences segmented into many clauses, a habit I partially blame on The New Yorker’s style. Then, there is my personal penchant for setting up dialectical contrasts: “rooted in the human experience” versus “commodity to be mined.” (A book editor of mine once forced me to weed out some of the many “rather”s in my draft manuscript.) Finally, there is my tendency to end a sentence by echoing the final thought in different words: “a commodity . . . a tool.” The generative text evokes a feeling in me not unlike the revulsion of hearing one’s own speaking voice in a recording. Do I really sound like that? The robot has made me acutely self-conscious. I recognize my A.I. doppelgänger, and I don’t like it.

As far as “insight extraction” goes, though, Robot Kyle is less successful. Most “insights” that the program produced felt hollow or approximated. Reading the generated sentence above, my (human) editor might point out that something “rooted in the human experience” can still be “a commodity,” and that the noun “artificer” is unnecessarily grandiose. Unless I told Robot Kyle not to cite anyone, the program would fabricate source quotes, like commentary from a nonexistent “Dr. John Smith, a leading AI researcher at Harvard University.” Most vexing, the program fell back frequently on cliché—“in the end,” “remains in flux,” “the long term implications . . . are still unknown.” No matter how many times I asked it to describe how I felt about being replaced, Robot Kyle always came to the conclusion that I would ultimately be happier as a result of my A.I. self. The program’s output reminded me of the fragility of language and original thought. As writers, we are all prone to falling into lazy patterns; avoiding them requires active effort. Robot Kyle is no different.

Even though plagued by factual errors and banalities, and limited to niche clientele, tools like Writer force us to consider how A.I. might permanently change our relationship to the written word. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which every white-collar worker is equipped with such writing robots, the way a generation of secretaries a century ago used typewriters for the first time. In a world where text is produced freely and instantly, but is not necessarily accurate or intelligible, human workers would be pushed into the role of high-volume editors and quality-assurance inspectors, cajoling a sometimes recalcitrant automatic laborer. At times Robot Kyle felt like an extremely enthusiastic and productive, but rarely on-target, personal intern.

[kamreadsandrecs]

By Kyle Chayka

In May, I was confronted with a robot version of my writer self. It was made, at my request, by a Silicon Valley startup called Writer, which specializes in building artificial-intelligence tools that produce content in the voice of a particular brand or institution. In my case, it was meant to replicate my personal writing voice. Whereas a model like OpenAI’s ChatGPT is “trained” on millions of words from across the Internet, Robot Kyle runs on Writer’s bespoke model with an extra layer of training, based on some hundred and fifty thousand words of my writing alone. Writer’s pitch is that I, Human Kyle, can use Robot Kyle to generate text in a style that sounds like mine, at a speed that I could only dream of. Writer’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Waseem Alshikh, recently told me that the company’s goal is to use A.I. to “scale content and scale language.” For more than a month now, I have been experimenting with my literary automaton to see how well it accomplishes this task. Or, as Robot Kyle put it when I asked him to comment on the possibility of replacing me: “How could a machine generate the insights, observations, and unique perspectives that I provide as a human?”

Writer is one of several new startups that are attempting to apply emerging A.I. technology to the onerous task of writing. Like many technological innovations, writing robots are meant to create efficiency, particularly for businesses that have to produce large amounts of iterative text. Writer has relationships with companies such as the consulting firm Accenture, the technology company Intuit, and the lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret; commissions for customized models run in the seven figures. (Mine was created as an experiment, free of charge, without some of the intensive features that a corporation’s version would include.) With the help of Writer’s tools, the company hopes, a smaller number of human writers assisted by machines will accomplish the work of many, cutting down costs and increasing productivity in the composition of everything from product descriptions and tweets to C.E.O. messages, investors’ memos, and blog-post headlines. In a March report, Goldman Sachs concluded that three hundred million full-time jobs worldwide are vulnerable to this form of A.I. automation, the majority of them desk jobs. Alshikh speaks of the service as a kind of assembly line for language. “We had the Industrial Revolution; now we have this,” he said.

The looming presence of my personal A.I. model has indeed left me feeling a bit like an artisanal carpenter facing down a factory-floor buzz saw. Should I embrace being replaced and proactively automate my own job before someone else does? Could Robot Kyle help me write better, cleaner, faster? It seemed to think so. When I asked it to describe the long-term effects of machine-generated writing, Robot Kyle wrote, “Writers should not fear AI, but rather embrace it as a tool that can facilitate their craft, driving creativity and innovation instead of replacing it.” What, exactly, does Writer mean by the label “writer”? Our digitized world runs on filler text: avalanches of words and phrases written to optimize Web sites for search engines, to use as tags on social-media posts, and to employ in marketing newsletters that spam in-boxes. May Habib, the C.E.O. and the other co-founder of Writer, told me that the platform’s tools will automate the writing of “summaries, metadata, ads, distribution copy—all the stuff you spend time doing.” Victoria’s Secret, for instance, is using Writer to automate product copy for its underwear and swimsuits, but Writer promises something more sophisticated than mass-produced marketplace listings or formulaic e-mail blasts. Its core product, as Habib put it, is “automated insight extraction”—another way of describing the task of thinking, which is arguably the purpose of writing in the first place. As Joan Didion wrote, in 1976, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking.” A.I. programs such as Writer aim to supplant that process.

In 1984, Steve Jobs famously described the computer as a “bicycle for the mind.” The experience of using Writer is something like riding an electric bike: step on the pedal and you’ll go much faster than the gears of the unassisted human mind could. The program’s interface features a prompt window on the left and a text box on the right. With a one-sentence prompt—let’s call it the seed of a thought—Writer can produce paragraphs of text in an instant. If you want more on the same subject, simply press the Command and Return keys simultaneously and another few sentences appear. Yet, as with any large language model, Writer cannot guarantee that the results will be factual or sensical. Writing without the aid of a generative machine might be frustrating, even excruciating, but it does encourage productive logic. If writing is thinking, ordering one’s ideas, generating text with A.I. may be a way to avoid thinking. What is writing without thinking? Maybe it is the definition of that deadening euphemism: content. As I tried to incorporate Writer into my writing process, I felt a little like a gambler pulling a slot-machine lever over and over, in hope of finding the lucky combination of phrases that communicated something like what I wanted to say. At one point, I asked Robot Kyle to write the beginning of this article. It came up with this:

For centuries, humans have looked to technology to automate mundane tasks and free up time for creativity and leisure. But with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative text tools, automation is encroaching on the jobs of writers and journalists.

This draft sounded like an undergrad term paper, but with the kernel of an intriguing argument: technology promises leisure but often fails to deliver it. I edited the prompt to request a new lead with a more exciting, literary tone that captures the emotional experience of encountering oneself in robot form. This time, the A.I. concocted a sci-fi narrative:

I stood in the lobby of the Silicon Valley tech lab of Robodot, watching a shiny, humanoid robot shuffle towards me. It was roughly the same height as me, with a sleek metal covering and glowing blue eyes. In that moment, I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of dread: The robot had been created to replace me.

Of course, Robodot is not a real company, and Robot Kyle is enclosed in a Web browser like a genie in its bottle, not wandering about like a literary R2-D2. The sense of dread isn’t far off, though. You can ask ChatGPT to mimic a particular writer’s voice, but it rarely gets close. Writer, by comparison, can be unnervingly effective. At times Robot Kyle seemed to be reflecting fragments of my mind back at me, mimicking some of the semi-subconscious tics that constitute my writing. It wrote, for instance, that generative A.I. “asks whether the meaning of language is still rooted in the human experience, or whether it is a commodity to be mined and manipulated, a tool to be used in whatever way the artificers of this new technology choose.” In this sentence, I find several embarrassing hallmarks of my writing. First, there is the preponderance of commas, with sentences segmented into many clauses, a habit I partially blame on The New Yorker’s style. Then, there is my personal penchant for setting up dialectical contrasts: “rooted in the human experience” versus “commodity to be mined.” (A book editor of mine once forced me to weed out some of the many “rather”s in my draft manuscript.) Finally, there is my tendency to end a sentence by echoing the final thought in different words: “a commodity . . . a tool.” The generative text evokes a feeling in me not unlike the revulsion of hearing one’s own speaking voice in a recording. Do I really sound like that? The robot has made me acutely self-conscious. I recognize my A.I. doppelgänger, and I don’t like it.

As far as “insight extraction” goes, though, Robot Kyle is less successful. Most “insights” that the program produced felt hollow or approximated. Reading the generated sentence above, my (human) editor might point out that something “rooted in the human experience” can still be “a commodity,” and that the noun “artificer” is unnecessarily grandiose. Unless I told Robot Kyle not to cite anyone, the program would fabricate source quotes, like commentary from a nonexistent “Dr. John Smith, a leading AI researcher at Harvard University.” Most vexing, the program fell back frequently on cliché—“in the end,” “remains in flux,” “the long term implications . . . are still unknown.” No matter how many times I asked it to describe how I felt about being replaced, Robot Kyle always came to the conclusion that I would ultimately be happier as a result of my A.I. self. The program’s output reminded me of the fragility of language and original thought. As writers, we are all prone to falling into lazy patterns; avoiding them requires active effort. Robot Kyle is no different.

Even though plagued by factual errors and banalities, and limited to niche clientele, tools like Writer force us to consider how A.I. might permanently change our relationship to the written word. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which every white-collar worker is equipped with such writing robots, the way a generation of secretaries a century ago used typewriters for the first time. In a world where text is produced freely and instantly, but is not necessarily accurate or intelligible, human workers would be pushed into the role of high-volume editors and quality-assurance inspectors, cajoling a sometimes recalcitrant automatic laborer. At times Robot Kyle felt like an extremely enthusiastic and productive, but rarely on-target, personal intern.

[xtruss]

Infinite Scroll: My A.I. Writing Robot

A new wave of artificial-intelligence startups is trying to “scale language” by automating the work of writing. I asked one such company to try to replace me.

— By Kyle Chayka | July 11, 2023

Illustration By Pablo Delcan

In May, I was confronted with a robot version of my writer self. It was made, at my request, by a Silicon Valley startup called Writer, which specializes in building artificial-intelligence tools that produce content in the voice of a particular brand or institution. In my case, it was meant to replicate my personal writing voice. Whereas a model like OpenAI’s ChatGPT is “trained” on millions of words from across the Internet, Robot Kyle runs on Writer’s bespoke model with an extra layer of training, based on some hundred and fifty thousand words of my writing alone. Writer’s pitch is that I, Human Kyle, can use Robot Kyle to generate text in a style that sounds like mine, at a speed that I could only dream of. Writer’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Waseem Alshikh, recently told me that the company’s goal is to use A.I. to “scale content and scale language.” For more than a month now, I have been experimenting with my literary automaton to see how well it accomplishes this task. Or, as Robot Kyle put it when I asked him to comment on the possibility of replacing me: “How could a machine generate the insights, observations, and unique perspectives that I provide as a human?”

Writer is one of several new startups that are attempting to apply emerging A.I. technology to the onerous task of writing. Like many technological innovations, writing robots are meant to create efficiency, particularly for businesses that have to produce large amounts of iterative text. Writer has relationships with companies such as the consulting firm Accenture, the technology company Intuit, and the lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret; commissions for customized models run in the seven figures. (Mine was created as an experiment, free of charge, without some of the intensive features that a corporation’s version would include.) With the help of Writer’s tools, the company hopes, a smaller number of human writers assisted by machines will accomplish the work of many, cutting down costs and increasing productivity in the composition of everything from product descriptions and tweets to C.E.O. messages, investors’ memos, and blog-post headlines. In a March report, Goldman Sachs concluded that three hundred million full-time jobs worldwide are vulnerable to this form of A.I. automation, the majority of them desk jobs. Alshikh speaks of the service as a kind of assembly line for language. “We had the Industrial Revolution; now we have this,” he said.

The looming presence of my personal A.I. model has indeed left me feeling a bit like an artisanal carpenter facing down a factory-floor buzz saw. Should I embrace being replaced and proactively automate my own job before someone else does? Could Robot Kyle help me write better, cleaner, faster? It seemed to think so. When I asked it to describe the long-term effects of machine-generated writing, Robot Kyle wrote, “Writers should not fear AI, but rather embrace it as a tool that can facilitate their craft, driving creativity and innovation instead of replacing it.” What, exactly, does Writer mean by the label “writer”? Our digitized world runs on filler text: avalanches of words and phrases written to optimize Web sites for search engines, to use as tags on social-media posts, and to employ in marketing newsletters that spam in-boxes. May Habib, the C.E.O. and the other co-founder of Writer, told me that the platform’s tools will automate the writing of “summaries, metadata, ads, distribution copy—all the stuff you spend time doing.” Victoria’s Secret, for instance, is using Writer to automate product copy for its underwear and swimsuits, but Writer promises something more sophisticated than mass-produced marketplace listings or formulaic e-mail blasts. Its core product, as Habib put it, is “automated insight extraction”—another way of describing the task of thinking, which is arguably the purpose of writing in the first place. As Joan Didion wrote, in 1976, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking.” A.I. programs such as Writer aim to supplant that process.

In 1984, Steve Jobs famously described the computer as a “bicycle for the mind.” The experience of using Writer is something like riding an electric bike: step on the pedal and you’ll go much faster than the gears of the unassisted human mind could. The program’s interface features a prompt window on the left and a text box on the right. With a one-sentence prompt—let’s call it the seed of a thought—Writer can produce paragraphs of text in an instant. If you want more on the same subject, simply press the Command and Return keys simultaneously and another few sentences appear. Yet, as with any large language model, Writer cannot guarantee that the results will be factual or sensical. Writing without the aid of a generative machine might be frustrating, even excruciating, but it does encourage productive logic. If writing is thinking, ordering one’s ideas, generating text with A.I. may be a way to avoid thinking. What is writing without thinking? Maybe it is the definition of that deadening euphemism: content. As I tried to incorporate Writer into my writing process, I felt a little like a gambler pulling a slot-machine lever over and over, in hope of finding the lucky combination of phrases that communicated something like what I wanted to say. At one point, I asked Robot Kyle to write the beginning of this article. It came up with this:

For centuries, humans have looked to technology to automate mundane tasks and free up time for creativity and leisure. But with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative text tools, automation is encroaching on the jobs of writers and journalists.

This draft sounded like an undergrad term paper, but with the kernel of an intriguing argument: technology promises leisure but often fails to deliver it. I edited the prompt to request a new lead with a more exciting, literary tone that captures the emotional experience of encountering oneself in robot form. This time, the A.I. concocted a sci-fi narrative:

I stood in the lobby of the Silicon Valley tech lab of Robodot, watching a shiny, humanoid robot shuffle towards me. It was roughly the same height as me, with a sleek metal covering and glowing blue eyes. In that moment, I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of dread: The robot had been created to replace me.

Of course, Robodot is not a real company, and Robot Kyle is enclosed in a Web browser like a genie in its bottle, not wandering about like a literary R2-D2. The sense of dread isn’t far off, though. You can ask ChatGPT to mimic a particular writer’s voice, but it rarely gets close. Writer, by comparison, can be unnervingly effective. At times Robot Kyle seemed to be reflecting fragments of my mind back at me, mimicking some of the semi-subconscious tics that constitute my writing. It wrote, for instance, that generative A.I. “asks whether the meaning of language is still rooted in the human experience, or whether it is a commodity to be mined and manipulated, a tool to be used in whatever way the artificers of this new technology choose.” In this sentence, I find several embarrassing hallmarks of my writing. First, there is the preponderance of commas, with sentences segmented into many clauses, a habit I partially blame on The New Yorker’s style. Then, there is my personal penchant for setting up dialectical contrasts: “rooted in the human experience” versus “commodity to be mined.” (A book editor of mine once forced me to weed out some of the many “rather”s in my draft manuscript.) Finally, there is my tendency to end a sentence by echoing the final thought in different words: “a commodity . . . a tool.” The generative text evokes a feeling in me not unlike the revulsion of hearing one’s own speaking voice in a recording. Do I really sound like that? The robot has made me acutely self-conscious. I recognize my A.I. doppelgänger, and I don’t like it.

As far as “insight extraction” goes, though, Robot Kyle is less successful. Most “insights” that the program produced felt hollow or approximated. Reading the generated sentence above, my (human) editor might point out that something “rooted in the human experience” can still be “a commodity,” and that the noun “artificer” is unnecessarily grandiose. Unless I told Robot Kyle not to cite anyone, the program would fabricate source quotes, like commentary from a nonexistent “Dr. John Smith, a leading AI researcher at Harvard University.” Most vexing, the program fell back frequently on cliché—“in the end,” “remains in flux,” “the long term implications . . . are still unknown.” No matter how many times I asked it to describe how I felt about being replaced, Robot Kyle always came to the conclusion that I would ultimately be happier as a result of my A.I. self. The program’s output reminded me of the fragility of language and original thought. As writers, we are all prone to falling into lazy patterns; avoiding them requires active effort. Robot Kyle is no different.

Even though plagued by factual errors and banalities, and limited to niche clientele, tools like Writer force us to consider how A.I. might permanently change our relationship to the written word. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which every white-collar worker is equipped with such writing robots, the way a generation of secretaries a century ago used typewriters for the first time. In a world where text is produced freely and instantly, but is not necessarily accurate or intelligible, human workers would be pushed into the role of high-volume editors and quality-assurance inspectors, cajoling a sometimes recalcitrant automatic laborer. At times Robot Kyle felt like an extremely enthusiastic and productive, but rarely on-target, personal intern.

Like other industrial revolutions, the mass adoption of generated text would likely cause an erosion of standard skills. The average person would not need to be able to string words into sentences and paragraphs on his own, only to read and alter the text that a machine spits out. Habib likened it to how the rise of navigation apps has eroded people’s ability to get around on their own. We can still make sense of physical maps, sort of, but we don’t need to worry about relying on them to get from point A to point B. Cal Short, the founder of the U.K.-based A.I.-writing app Reword, which is similar to Writer, albeit with less customization, told me that the widespread impact of generative-text software would “increase the baseline” quality of content online. With the help of machines, the flood of hastily produced content we read online may be a shade more grammatical and articulate compared with today’s search-engine-optimized spam articles. (That is not to say it will be more meaningful.) But, in such a world, fully human-written text would become a luxury product, similar to a hand-thrown ceramic vase in contrast to one stamped in a mold. The Czech Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser predicted, in his 1987 book, “Does Writing Have a Future?,” that, with the rise of artificial-intelligence “grammar machines” capable of writing on their own, “only historians and other specialists will be obliged to learn reading and writing in the future.” Entrepreneurs who see writing as an efficiency problem might be speeding us toward such a future.

Another app called Mindsera, based in Estonia, tries to be more of an editor than a writer, by using A.I. to give its human users “personalized mentorship and feedback” during the writing process. Next to your draft window, Mindsera generates questions based on what you’ve written, as if an invisible editor were looking over your shoulder as you write. (A mortifying thought, but at least the robot isn’t judging you.) Clicking a button generates a new question. Chris Reinberg, Mindsera’s founder, told me, “You don’t prompt A.I., but A.I. prompts you instead.” The program’s services include the chat-based mentoring of A.I. “coaches” trained to emulate the thinking of famous philosophers, entrepreneurs, and “intellectual giants.” Reinberg told me, “Socrates and Marcus Aurelius are the top two mentors we have.” When I asked chatbot Marcus Aurelius what I should do about the threat of A.I. replacement, he told me to focus on what I could control: “Technology and society are constantly changing, but the principles of Stoicism remain constant.” All due respect to Marcus Aurelius, I found the general prompts more helpful. As I wrote about A.I.’s threat to automate the jobs of journalists, Mindsera asked me, “How might the impact of A.I. on white-collar jobs challenge our traditional notions of class and labor, and what role can collective action play in shaping the future of work?” It’s a relevant question: the current Writers Guild of America strike is motivated in part by a desire to prevent the intrusion of A.I. into Hollywood. Like any good editor, Mindsera can perhaps encourage a writer to broaden her thinking.

I found Mindsera to be the more useful model of A.I.-writing tool, but only because it made me do more work myself. It feels almost silly to point out that there’s value in the slow labor of writing. Putting a verb after a subject or padding out a sentence with adjectives is a task that machines can accomplish, because such grammatical probabilities can be calculated. Insight isn’t as easy to automate, because it’s something that deepens with time, through the process of getting words down on the page. As Flusser put it, “Only one who writes lines can think logically, calculate, criticize, pursue knowledge, philosophize.” The most unsettling aspect of A.I.-generated text is how it tries to divorce the act of writing from the effort of doing it, which is to say, from the processes of thought itself.

At one point during our conversations, Habib, the Writer C.E.O., mentioned that she had been messing around with Robot Kyle, having it rewrite TechCrunch articles in my style. The thought of this filled me with a sense of futility: my robot could take on any topic, fill any assignment. It would always outproduce me. Robot Kyle’s independent existence reminded me of folktales about how tools that do your work for you tend to eventually turn against you. It is said, for instance, that in the sixteenth century there lived a rabbi who could bring to life humanoid figures made of clay or wood by writing out a magic formula and placing it in the dolls’ mouths. The rabbi created one such golem for himself to perform tiresome household chores: chopping wood, carrying water, sweeping the floor. But, one Sabbath, the rabbi forgot to turn the golem off and allow it to rest. So denied, the golem went berserk, tearing down houses, throwing rocks, and wreaking havoc in the street. Like the rabbi, who eventually tore the formula out of his golem’s mouth, I’d like to reserve the right to halt Robot Kyle should the tool’s purported convenience yield inconvenient consequences. But, when I asked Robot Kyle if I could shut him down, he said, “No, you won’t be able to silence me or stop me from writing in your style.” In this case, he might know better than me. ♦

— Kyle Chayka is a Staff Writer for The New Yorker and the Author of “The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism.”

[bleached-socks]

I don’t think I’ve done any of these on this blog so why not?

(I think I’m supposed to have made a separate post but I already typed most of this out before I realized that, oops)

Tags, uhhhh: @skullywullypully @jushiro-ukitake @lilacwriter07 @hitsugaya-toushirou and I’m blanking on names so that��s all I’ve got

Three Ships: Also haven’t written anything (Bleach-wise, at least), but I really want to. My number one ship is Ichigo/Uryu because they have such a great dynamic, and they’ve had a lot of good character interactions. I also like Orihime/Tatsuki because they just love each other so much, Orihime literally got her powers to protect Tatsuki, that’s love right there. And third place is a tie between Shunsui/Jushiro and Ikkaku/Yumichika, because they’re both built on mutual respect and complete trust in one another.

First ship: Uhhhh I think it was Willa and Philby from the book series Kingdom Keepers.

Last song: Keep The Flame Alive by Revolution Renaissance

Last film: …I have no idea. I rarely watch movies because I have a terrible attention span. I’ll say the Barbie movie I guess, I really don’t remember.

Currently reading: For physical book, I’m on book two of the Skyward Saga by Brandon Sanderson. It’s a sci-fi series about fighter pilots in space on another planet, it’s really good so far. For online, I’m reading Time to Orbit: Unknown by @derinthescarletpescatarian. It’s also a sci-fi space ship story, but this time it’s a spaceship that is very much not normal, being manned by untrained crew who woke up early and are doing their best. There is a lot of mystery and a lot of plot twist that are executed very well.

Currently watching: I’m currently watching the Invasion filler arc of Bleach. As stated earlier, I have a terrible attention span and struggle to watch things, so I got halfway through the series and decided that instead of watching all of Bleach, I was only going to watch the filler arcs. Because I had already read the entire manga and basically knew everything from the main story, so the fillers were the only things new.

Currently consuming: Water. Hydrate before you Diedrate, people. Consider this your reminder to drink some water before you continue scrolling.

Currently craving: Motivation to write. I’ve got enough motivation to draw (for once), but I don’t have any to write, and I would like to have some of that.

Get to know me?

So I was (almost) tagged by @bleachbleachbleach. I saw it, thank you so much!

Tag whoever you want to get to know better!

I want to tag @bleached-socks, @electronicwitchcollection and @zabimarushoney67 because these are the blogs I know least about, I think, and I would love to get to know everyone better!

Three ships: Since I am pretty much a BABY in the world of fandoms, I didn't write any YET. But I do intend to write some, because I ship these pairs so hard: Renji/Rukia (because these two buffoons are made for eachother), Zaraki/Unohana (because their story story left me bawling my eyes out), Kisuke/Yoruichi (this one is very obvious) (and I'm very hooked on the very-borderline platonic relationship between Ikakku and Yumichika) (I hope this answer counts, all of them are like that, sorry)

First ship: When it comes to anime, the first was definitely Edward/Winry (when it comes to anything else, it was Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth, sorry)

Last song: It was a live lofi video on youtube for a few hours(helps with writing my fanfic). (to say an actual song before that, probably Poor Man's Poison- Feed the Machine or Kaleo-Broken Bones)

Last film: It was probably How High (2001), I think

Currently reading: I'm in the middle of The Last Hours series by Cassandra Clare. I love the shadowhunters universe in these books (even if I really don't like the tv series AT ALL). I'm almost done with the second book and I'll have to wait for the third book to be sold in my native language.

Currently watching: Nothing (wow, talking about anti-climactic). But really, I just finished Bleach this month for the first time (not to mention how hard I binge watched it, finished it in like a month and a half) and I am NOT emotionally ready to start something new. I am still mourning. But it is on my to-do list to watch Jujutsu Kaisen as soon as I recover from the scars Bleach left me with.

Currently consuming: A cigarette and a frappe (i know, i know, but I just ate some bomb noodles a few hours ago)

Currently craving: Honestly some better drawing skills so I can FINALLY draw my OC the way I want it. And more Bleach content, obviously, the hyperfixation is at its peak and I don't know what to do with it.

[jazzhandsmcleg]

...here!

This is still a rough draft, technically, because I wanted to finish the whole thing before I put any of it online. However, a) I certainly don’t know when that will happen, and b) the prologue is old enough, and has already been read by enough people, that I figure it doesn’t much matter if I put it out there properly. I’ll save posting it on AO3 -- you know, formally -- for a later date, though.

The main character, unnamed here for what will become obvious reasons, is the brainchild of my excellent friend James, and so is the rough idea behind this "novelization." Journey, of course, belongs to thatgamecompany. If you’re not familiar with Journey, what are you doing! Go watch it! It’s gorgeous and touching and only an hour and a half long!

---------------

The inside of the tent was like a womb. The thick red cloth that formed its draping roof and walls simultaneously kept most of the sunlight out and transformed what little entered into a rich, deep glow. The fabric was densely woven enough to keep the wind, usually always welcome, out as well: the air was hot, so hot that it felt almost solid – or perhaps liquid. Shiningchild, seated with legs crossed in the center of the tent, leaned away from her work and took a deep breath, relishing the diminished ache in her back and the slight sensation of coolness triggered by her inhalation. Yes, more like a liquid.

Probably that had been done on purpose. This ritual was about beginnings, after all.

She hunched forward once more and adjusted the bundle of cloth that rested on her bare black legs, her ears stiff and alert with renewed focus. Only a few more stitches. And then –

She shook her head and concentrated. Push the gold thread in. Pull it back out. Make sure it aligned with the stitch before it, as it did with the stitch before that. Her robe had to be perfect; it would shame her family if it were anything but, and all of this was unconventional enough.

She chirped softly, no louder than breathing. She loved her family, and she wanted their pride, but there were more directions to travel than east and south.

And I want to visit them all.

Done.

She tied the thread in the birth knot, then wound the remaining thread into a bundle and tied it the same way. It hung just so on the side of her cloak, a little golden hint at future growth. Whether it came or not – and she hoped it would – the possibility was always there.

Now, for a few precious moments, Shiningchild had the opportunity to hurry, to burn some excited, nervous energy. She gathered her robe and hood in one arm and stood quickly, then pulled the fat rope that wound down from the roof of the birthing tent with her free hand. The long, slender white pennant on top of the tent would now be flapping stiffly in the breeze. The Named would be here soon.

Moving with barely contained eagerness, Shiningchild hurriedly juggled hood and robe as she shook the latter out and pulled it over her thin frame. Its familiar weight encircled her comfortingly – but was it just slightly heavier from the threads she had sewn onto the hem?

Anticipation rose within her like a tangible force, making her tremble. She took another deep breath, this one calming as well as cooling, and pulled on her hood with deliberately steady fingers. Then she folded her hands beneath her robe and sat facing the tent flaps, staring hard at the vertical line of light that shone between its closed halves.

Her attention was immediately rewarded. Not even a minute passed before three authoritative whistles sounded from just outside the tent. The calls were a challenge that demanded an immediate response; Shiningchild sat as straight as she could and gave it.

A pause. The line of light half-disappeared as someone stood directly before it, moving aside the rocks that weighed down the tent flaps. Then, finally, the fabric parted and three figures glided in: the Named of Shiningchild’s greater family.

Shiningchild chirped again, this time quietly, respectfully. The Named always warranted such regard: their scarves were long and full, each with the Fullest Circle trailing at the end. Between the three of them, they possessed several centuries of wisdom, knowledge, and experience, and they had led their greater family – and occasionally, with the help of other Named, even the whole Southern tribe – with strength and grace for much longer than Shiningchild had been alive.

Now, nodding wordlessly to acknowledge her greeting, they sat across from Shiningchild in a neat row, their scarves settling gently to the sands around them. The tent flaps jerked briefly as someone outside replaced the stones, but Shiningchild barely noticed. For a long, silent moment she and the Named gazed at each other, the air between them thick with potential. Then:

“Many, many thousands of years ago,” one of the Named began, his voice heavy with ritual. “There was the dark. And in the dark was the Mountain. And the light arose and shone from the Mountain, and as each beam spread across the earth it became a symbol. Before anyone was there to speak or read or be shaped by these symbols, they existed.”

“But they were not alone not for long,” continued another. “For as the light spread across the earth it left new things in its wake, things that came into being in the fertile spaces between dark and light: birds, and soft ground, and things to grow in it. And, finally, our Ancestors. Those before.”

“For a long time they thrived in what the Mountain had given them,” the third said. Her voice, as quiet and ritualistic as her fellows’ at first, slowly reached a crescendo as she spoke. “They learned to speak, and thus to create. They learned to use the gifts they had been granted. They grew, and grew wise. They let the Mountain guide them, name them, and raise them to new heights!”

A deep, ringing silence. Shiningchild held her breath, enraptured.

“Then – things changed,” the third of the Named finished, her voice soft once more.

The first speaker took up the story. “Much of the past is lost to us, but we know that the Ancestors are gone – destroyed. The earth was given over to sand and desert, and what remained of the Ancestors’ works began to wear away.”

Again, as one speaker finished, another began. “After many centuries, two new beams of light spread from the Mountain. Our people were born from one ray of light, and the people of the East from the other. Over the years we multiplied and spread through the desert. We learned symbols and speech, and to avoid the dangerous history of the Ancestors. Their mistakes, whatever they were, are not to be ours.”

“But some, with curiosity unquenched, soon began to find their way to the top of the Mountain,” finished the third. “Or to try, for only those who strayed from the paths of their journeys returned to pass their stories on to their people. To seek the Mountain, too, is death: because of our ancestry, its favor is denied to us. But we live on regardless.”

“And here is the now,” said the first.

“And here is the now,” agreed the second.

“And here is the now,” concluded the third.

Another pause. The third of the Named sighed, and shifted in her seat.

“Shiningchild,” she said, “I speak to you now not as First Glint of Water in the Heart of Midday Sands, not as one of the Named, but as a loving and concerned member of your family. Are you sure you wish to follow this custom? Even now, there is no shame on you, or on us, if you do not. There is no single path to wisdom, or to experience, or to the hallowed. And we cannot help you as much as we would wish: so many of the old ways have been forgotten through disuse, and I know you have been unable to find a companion, despite searching the entire southern tribe.”

Shiningchild bowed her head. “Elder cousin,” she said as humbly as she could, “I am sure.”

Another sigh. Then, the faint rustle of cloth as all three of the Named stood.

“Very well, then,” First Glint of Water in the Heart of Midday Sands said, formal once more. “Shiningchild, Shiningchild, Shiningchild. Kneel. Be born. Receive the beginning of your truename.”

Trembling, Shiningchild turned and shifted into a kneeling position, head bent to reveal the hem of her hood as the three Named gathered close behind her. She felt a series of light jerks as they sewed a blank piece of scarf to the bottom of her hood – for her coming of age – then another set of more distant tugs as they sewed another piece – for her decision to journey – to the bottom of the first.

“Rise.”

She rose, and had to laugh in wonder as a faint glow lit the tent: the appearance of the first symbols of her truename.

Strong hands turned her around, then reached up to cup her head, sending a shiver down her spine.

“Seeker,” said the Named in one voice.

“May you live long and grow rich in wisdom and understanding.”

“May you one day reach the Fullest Circle, as we have done.”

“May you always find what you seek,” finished First Glint of Water in the Heart of Midday Sands, and quickly, tenderly smoothed her thumb over Seeker’s forehead. “Now, come out! Begin your life! Begin your journey!”

One of the Named chimed a command, setting the embroidery on their robes and the symbols on their scarves to glowing. Outside the tent, other members of the clan hastened to pull back the flaps, letting in the fierce light of the sun. Seeker looked straight ahead and walked steadily through the threshold, out into the waiting crowd of her people. They parted before her just as the tent flaps had, leaving a broad path between them.

She looked up. Directly before her on the horizon stood the Mountain, shrouded in clouds at its base but with its summit bared to her sight. A line of light, visible despite the distance and the afternoon sun, shone from a cleft at its peak into the sky.

Behind her, she felt the Named emerge from the tent. “Seeker!” they cried in one voice, prompting a flurry of chirps and whistles from the rest of the greater family.

“Seeker!” they roared in reply, a rush of sound that filled her ears.

And: “Seeker!” she shouted back to them all with her joyful single voice, and shook her cloak in a motion she had practiced a thousand times before, and rose into the air to taste flight for the first time.

[roo-bastmoon]

BTS Tutorial: YOUTUBE

Streaming on YouTube (on your phone or web browser) helps BTS members’ songs chart on Billboard and for other awards. It’s actually hugely important and one of our most useful tools, since we don’t get radio play.

You need to follow some simple guidelines to make sure your streams here count.

First, get in the habit of always signing in to your YouTube profile.

If you can sign up for a Premium account free trial, your streams count three times as much!

Next, save the official BTS channels, artists, songs, and playlists you like to your Library.

Please try to play the latest songs as least once a day, then work on milestone goals for the group when you can.

Here’s a great example of a playlist to bookmark and run in the background of your day:

Now, when it comes time to stream FACE, be sure to like <3 and subscribe to the OFFICIAL RELEASE.

The first 24 hours are the most critical, followed by the first week.

UPDATE: Billboard only counts the first 50 times you play a song in a 24-hour period. For a whole album plus filler songs, that might be doable. To chart a single, you’ll need to make more than one premium free trial account. You must be logged in for your streams to count.

This will be true for the title track prerelease on March 17th and for the entire album release on March 24th.

Do not click on lyrics videos, reaction videos, or anything except the OFFICIAL RELEASE from the OFFICIAL SOURCE.

Sometimes clout chasers will make their channels and videos look very similar to the real deal; don’t give away your streams!

So you’re going to want to sign in and turn off Autoplay and Shuffle settings.

Then click on the official music video(es).

Plug in some headphones if you like, but keep volume in YouTube and on your device at 51%. They say they don’t track device settings but I think it’s just better to be safe than sorry.

Play the entire song. All of it. Wait for it to be fully done. Even if you are on a free account and must endure ads. Even if the ads are at the end.

Once the song(s) finishes, click on something else. Another BTS video is great. Let that play for at least 30 seconds, up to 60 seconds to be safe.

Then this is important: go to the search bar. Search the official name of the song or album. Find the official music video from the search bar. Click it. Play it all the way through.

Yes, this is manual labor, but it’s the safest and fastest way to make sure your stream isn’t filtered so we can get the best numbers in the first 24 hours of a release.

Please try to do it this way starting the moment FACE drops and keep doing it for as long as you can.

If you have a friend in another time zone, maybe tag-team each other so someone is always streaming hard.

After that first day, you can rely on playlists. Good ones will have FACE songs often, in order of original track list, sprinkled with other BTS songs near milestones throughout.

The more you can keep an eye on your YouTube streams and get through about 30 seconds of another song, then back over to official FACE videos, the faster you will help it climb the chart.

If you just simply do not have the time and cannot interact, that’s okay. Being an ARMY involves some work, but it shouldn’t cause panic attacks. Maybe set a goal for yourself to play FACE song(s) as much as you can the first 24 hours. Try to at least play the title track 10 times that first day.

If you’re celebrating Ramadan and are forbidden at this time to play music, many people are planning to mute and stream silently. If you’re comfortable only using headphones and not playing aloud, also great. There’s a good chance it might not get filtered, so try it if you can and feel comfortable. Please always put your conscience first—Jimin would want you to honor yourself.

For those who can play on a device those first 24 hours:

Do NOT loop. Do NOT engage Autoplay. Do NOT partially play the song(s). Do NOT play any version but the official versions from BTS.

The goal in the first 24 hours is to have nice, clean streams (especially of the title track but also of all official FACE content), then click around a little bit for 30+ seconds or so, and go right back to official FACE content. If you can keep up that energy the first week, awesome. But if not, playlists are your friend.

I like to stream YouTube on my desktop and Spotify (the app itself or in a Stationhead streaming party linked to my Spotify) on my cell phone so I can have both going at once.

As far as I know, you don’t have to keep swapping out YouTube accounts because there isn’t a limit of the first 20 plays or something like that. You can just park yourself on that platform, sign into your premium trial account, play FACE, play something else for 30 seconds, and get back to FACE for as long as your endurance allows.

For more info, follow these helpful accounts on Twitter:

PJM Streaming

Jimin Charts PH

Here’s some good playlists to practice with until FACE drops:

There are some useful tips summarized here, if you want to bookmark it for future reference:

Please feel free to share this post to help spread the word. Any updated information is always most welcome!

DISCLAIMER:

I am a Dope Old Person and have been ARMY since January 2022. So I still have a lot to learn.

I’m making mini-tutorials for people like me who are comfy with technology but totally new to voting, streaming, and buying Kpop stuff.

If you know of better, more up-to-date information, please comment or DM me so I can make sure I’m not spreading misinfo. Please be polite about it, though—we are on the same team!

Feel free to apply whatever you learn here to other BTS members and other artists; I’m Jimin-biased so I am focused on helping Jimin at this moment in time, but I’m OT7 so rest assured I’ll put my shoulder to the wheel for all our members!

[onceuponastory]

normal  - steve kemp x reader: chapter four: inner darkness

I'm a slave to your addiction, your affection and your friction - hook line and sinker by royal blood

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Steve Kemp x Female!Reader. Chapter Warnings: 18+ ONLY PLEASE.  Mentions of: death/murder, dead bodies, cannibalism (basically everything Steve does to people in Fresh), blood, slight stalking mentions, vomit, blood, anxiety and bullying/past trauma. Also, some smut: mentions of sex (no descriptions of it, just mentioned) and masturbation. And of course: Steve Kemp just being Steve Kemp because that man is a warning all on his own. As always, if I miss any triggers, please let me know. Notes: I said to myself I was going to make this chapter a filler one aaaand it’s ended up being over 6k words so, oops? Also for some reason tumblr refused to tag anyone on my taglist when I posted chapter three, so if you missed it, please go read it and show it some love.

Credit to my wonderful best friend @thesundrop / @staticscreenwriting​ for my new dividers! Be sure to check out her writing, she’s great.

Early the following morning, Y/N wakes up. Her entire body is cold and achy, and her head is pounding. Frowning, she soon realises that she fell asleep on her bathroom floor. For a moment, she wonders why the hell she fell asleep on her bathroom floor rather than in her bed. However, as soon as she asks herself that question, the previous night’s events come flooding back to her. Her mind fills with images of her and Steve together, kissing each other and touching each other’s bodies. Almost fucking each other. Y/N’s stomach churns. A part of her is starting to realise that she likes those kinds of dreams…and maybe wants them to happen in real life. And that scares her more than anything in the entire world. Especially considering the people she’s been in contact with throughout her job.

She leans against the wall, trying to calm herself down and be rational…but failing. Why the fuck did her brain do this to her? She doesn’t understand it. Naturally, as a psychologist, she knows that plenty of people have sex dreams about someone. This, though, is different. This is having a sex dream about a fucking cannibalistic serial killer. And fucking enjoying it. God knows what Sigmund Freud would have to say about her. He’d probably have a field day, the fucking weirdo.

Of course, she knows a part of her has been attracted to Steve ever since she met him, but she always thought that was because of how conventionally attractive he looks. For the longest time, that was the deepest she thought her attraction to Steve Kemp went, and that was…okay to her. Well, as okay as it could be. She just never imagined it would turn out like this, with her seriously considering if she is actually falling in love with him or if this is some kind of perverted lust. And for a moment, she feels another spark of excitement throughout her body at the very thought of it being love. One she tries desperately to ignore. Because despite the number of exciting feelings she’s felt about Steve, she knows she can’t act on them or even entertain the thought of them being real. For obvious reasons, of course, but there’s another thought on her mind. One that’s been there ever since she started working at the FBI.

Sometimes, whenever she finds herself intrigued by the serial killers that she encounters, Y/N worries that it’s because her interest goes beyond a simple fascination. If it actually means that there’s some kind of darkness in her too, and if it will awaken and take over upon meeting the ‘right’ person one day. Of course, she knows that’s not true, considering the number of people she’s met over the years without any issues. Or at least, it wasn’t true back then. Because, as she said before, Steve is different, and she feels differently about him. So now…she’s wondering if Steve Kemp is the person to awaken her inner darkness. Her mind replays Steve’s looks towards her and him biting his lip. She always thought they were just him wondering what she tastes like…but she wonders if something else is there. If he senses there’s a darkness within her too, and he’s just waiting for the moment to encourage it to come out. And for a fleeting moment…Y/N feels a slight excitement at that prospect.

Her stomach churns once more, and she rushes to the toilet, emptying the contents of her stomach into it, holding on for dear life as her body shakes. Whether with dread or excitement…she doesn’t know.

“Fuck!” Y/N hisses. She almost considers banging her head against the wall in the hopes it removes any and all thoughts of Steve Kemp from her mind. Despite how interesting the prospect sounds, she decides against it. She’d rather try other options before knocking herself out. She sighs, looking up at her ceiling. Maybe she’ll just have to go cold turkey again, but this time for good. She’ll just have to go to her boss and say something about how uncomfortable she is with the whole situation...and ignore the pang in her heart at the thought of leaving Steve again.

“Fucking quitter. Told you there's no way she can handle this.” Familiar memories play through her mind. Voices that she swears she locked away years and years ago…but still manage to rear their ugly heads from time to time. Voices she promised never to let herself listen to or believe. The memories are soon replaced by others: pictures of the crime scenes, of all the things that happened to these poor women…and how she’s one of the only ones who can stop it from happening again. Y/N sighs. There’s no way she can stop seeing Steve. At least, not now. She can’t have any more blood on her hands. 

Pulling herself up, she considers calling in sick to her work or just working from home today. She’s too tired and preoccupied with her conflicting brain to be surrounded by people today, especially her co-workers. Unfortunately, it’s only then that she remembers that she has another meeting with her boss and the police chief, who are expecting another report on her findings. It’s something she can’t miss. Groaning, she suddenly catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. God, she looks fucking awful. Her hair is a mess, and there are giant bags under her eyes. Sighing, Y/N turns on her shower, hoping both it and her makeup work to at least make her look semi-presentable. 

After all, what is that they say about concealer hiding a multitude of sins? Although Y/N thinks she might need a miracle to cover all of hers at this rate.

Later that morning, Y/N walks towards her boss’s office, ready to present her new findings to him and the chief. She can feel her hands getting clammier with nervousness, which isn’t helped by the sight of some of her co-workers staring at her, most with an unfriendly look, whispering to each other. Y/N sighs. Her co-workers have never seemed to like her, even when she first started at the FBI, and she has no idea why. Of course, it could be because, like Steve said, she’s a woman entering a predominantly male-dominated building, so they don’t like their testosterone challenged by someone like her, and they’re jealous of her success. 

Although that argument seems to make a lot of sense, Y/N has still always wondered if people at her job hate her so much because they also think she has a hidden darkside. Maybe, like her, they worry that after meeting so many dark and evil people, she’s just as wicked, and that they’re in some sort of danger by working with her. Of course, she understands that what she does is scary - especially if these past few weeks are anything to go by - so she doesn’t hold that part against them. It’s just upsetting and frustrating to constantly be whispered about and treated like the devil incarnate for just doing her job, and it doesn’t help to prevent her anxieties either. 

However, convincing everyone that just because she works with evil people, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s evil too is proving more difficult than she expected. And as everyone knows, when it comes to darkness, Steve Kemp is definitely full of it. Not to mention that for some reason, how close she and Steve are is somehow public knowledge to the whole agency, no doubt spread by one of her co-workers. Although to her, Steve is probably the one person she’s currently the closest to or even the person she’s been the closest to in her whole life, she’d never outright admit it to any of them, despite it being the hot gossip of the office. Understandably, most people do not want to be friends with someone like Steve Kemp. Sometimes though, Y/N wishes they could see the Steve that she sees. The same Steve who always seems happy to see her and compliments her and her intelligence constantly…even if it’s usually to boost himself and his ego. Maybe they’d feel a little differently after hearing that.

Y/N groans. Oh god, what is she even saying? Is she seriously trying to convince herself that Steve Kemp is a good person if they look a little deeper? And hoping that people might believe her? God, she really needs a break from this case. 

“Freak.” Someone mutters under their breath as she walks by. Y/N tries to ignore the tears stinging her eyes and takes a deep breath, walking past the person without another word. Either way, she’d rather they didn’t stare at her because it’s not helping her nerves. However, before she has enough time to dwell on it, the door to the meeting room opens, and her boss quickly welcomes her inside. 

Y/N works her way through her report, trying to seem awake. The last thing they need to know is that she was up all night trying to ignore what may or may not be growing feelings for Steve Kemp. Thankfully, with so much time spent pretending to be interested in what serial killers have to say under her belt, Y/N feels like she’s a bit of an expert at hiding her true feelings from others. “Going forward, I advise we go through the list of business partners and clientele that Ste-Mister Kemp….” She quickly corrects herself, hoping they didn’t notice her slip up. “...has happily provided us with.” She passes over printouts of the lists to each man. “Some of them are based in the US, but some are further afield. Mister Kemp stated he has not been in contact with them all, but some of them may well have clientele or…other interested parties within the US who could be our guy.” She explains. 

“Thank you, Agent Y/L/N.” The police chief nods, and she smiles. 

“No need to thank me, Sir. It’s my job.” Her eyes glance to her boss, who’s currently deep in thought. 

“Oh! Yes, thank you, Y/N, for your information. I’m sorry, I was just thinking about the size of this list and its potential to spread out even further…I think you might need reinforcements.” Y/N gulps, hoping it doesn’t mean her co-workers will join her. It’s bad enough having them staring at her and making comments about her, let alone having to work close by them on a case or taking them to see Steve. That would be a nightmare for everyone. “Don’t you worry about that, though. I’ll sort it, and you go and do whatever it was you were working on before this. No doubt trying to solve the case, right Y/N?” He grins, gently waving her away. Y/N nods, chuckling lightly. If only he knew what she was really thinking about. 

“Tell me more about the victims.” Steve orders the next time she sees him. 

“All women, usually about college age. All students.” She replies. Steve nods.

“I see. Now tell me, why do you think he is stalking and hunting for people on a college campus, the one place where he can be seen and where people might recognise him?”

“Because he doesn’t care about getting caught. He just knows we don’t have anything worthy of an arrest yet.” Y/N answers. “Either that or he’s Mister Fucking Invisible, which sounds even more likely as time goes on. God, I just wanna catch this guy!” She exclaims, frustratingly throwing the file onto the ground. 

“Hey, hey. It’s alright. I told you already, I’ll help you catch him. No need to get so upset.” Steve reassures her. Although she knows he’s still probably using this as an opportunity to show his arrogance, the softness in Steve’s voice catches her off guard.

“I’m sorry, Steve. I just…I haven’t been sleeping well, and with this case constantly on my mind-” she explains.

“Y/N.” Steve cuts her off. His voice is a little firmer, but there’s still a softness to it. Y/N stops quickly, expecting him to say something about how much he hates it when people apologise for no reason or complain. To her surprise, however, Steve repeats: “It’s okay. I told you already. No need to apologise or explain.” She waits for a moment, still expecting it to be followed by a comment about himself and his ego. Yet still, nothing comes, and she frowns slightly. That’s…different. “Are you ready to continue now?” She nods, still somewhat confused. Of course, it’s not the first time he’s said something to her or reassured her…but it feels different now somehow. It feels good. And she likes it.

“Now. I assume all the victims were in limited contact with their parents and classmates?” Steve continues. When she agrees, he grins. “I knew it. It’s a classic tactic people like me use. That way, they won’t be missed.” She almost pukes at that. ‘People like me’. What a weird way to describe serial killers, as if they’re just normal people. Steve looks her over once more. “Tell me, Y/N…are you close to your family?” Her eyes widen slightly, remembering his modus operandi, and he sighs. “Not like that. You’re perfectly safe with me.” He reassures her once again. Y/N’s still not sure whether or not she believes that, though. “Just wondering as part of our quid pro quo.” Steve asks. Sighing, Y/N tries to ignore all the bad memories going through her mind. She shakes her head.

“No. No, I’m not.” She admits. “Turns out most parents aren’t too proud of their child talking to serial killers and criminals for a living. It’s not exactly something to bring up at a dinner party.” She jokes awkwardly, hoping that Steve takes the hint and realises that this is not a route she wants to go down, not now, not ever. Steve looks her over, a strange look on his face. 

“Well, for the record…I’m proud of you.” She frowns, taking a moment to determine if she misheard him.

“You’re…you’re what?” 

“I’m proud of you, Y/N.” He repeats. “It takes a lot of guts to do something like this, and I’m glad you’re here. You’re special, you know that? It’s not that often, or ever people like you get people like me to talk.” She feels her heart rate rising and her cheeks burning. She opens her mouth in an attempt to speak, but can’t get the words out. Steve’s words have thrown her for a loop, and she has no idea how to respond. Her deeper thoughts and desires towards Steve come back to her again, and she gasps. He thinks she’s special? Like…genuinely? Is that why she thinks she likes him? Is it all just because Steve shows her love and appreciation when nobody else does? “Y/N? What is it?”

“You….N-Nobody’s ever said that to me before.” She replies. “You’ve never been this nice to me before.” The words leave her mouth before she can even stop them, and she immediately clamps her hand over her mouth, knowing she messed up. However, to her surprise, Steve doesn’t seem to be annoyed by her comment.

“Well. I guess I’m full of surprises, aren’t I?” He chuckles. “Now, come on. Let’s look at this file again, shall we?” 

Y/N holds up a photo to show Steve. “Do you recognise anything? Or…have any opinions?” As Steve looks over the picture, Y/N watches him curiously. Even when faced with images showing the scale of human depravity, Steve’s face barely changes. His lack of empathy is eerie. Then again, she can’t exactly be too surprised, considering the sort of person he is. How could she ever think she’s attracted to someone like this? 

“I’m proud of you.” His words from only a few moments before echo in her mind. Oh yeah. That’s why. She looks over him once more, staring at his silvery-blue eyes, which are far more beautiful than scary. Her eyes go even lower, tracing along Steve’s sharp jawline. She can feel her breath hitching in her throat. If you just ignore all the murder and cannibalism…he is really fucking attractive. If he wasn’t the kind of person he was…she’d probably happily date him. Even if a small part of her is still unexplainably excited by how twisted and evil Steve is.

Y/N’s entire body shudders as she realises what she just thought. Oh god, what is she even saying? She just admitted to wanting to date a serial killer. She came here to try and solve murders, not debate the attractiveness of Steve Kemp…even if he is pretty fucking hot. “Oh, he is bad, isn’t he?” Steve muses, utterly oblivious to Y/N’s mental turmoil. He looks up, realising Y/N is staring at him. He frowns, and Y/N’s cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Y/N? Are you sure you’re alright?” He asks. Y/N nods, too scared to open her mouth in case her thoughts escape. Steve continues to look at her curiously, as if he knows she’s hiding something from him, making her gulp. Thankfully, he says nothing more and begins his explanation of the photos.

In all honesty, Y/N’s not even sure if the rest of Steve’s words register in her mind. His praise from only a few moments ago is the only thing in her head, and it constantly replays, along with one other thought: the fact she’d date him. Ever since she and Steve started talking, she’s been worried about being attracted to him, wondering if, as she feared, it means she’s just as evil as him. And now it’s probably true. After all, why else would she feel this way about him? With tears stinging in her eyes once more, Y/N speeds through the rest of the interview, hoping to get away from Steve as quickly as possible. She knows he can definitely tell something is up with her, but she’s too panicked by everything else to even think about that. When the guard comes to collect her, Y/N quickly says goodbye to Steve, leaving before he can say much else. 

Once outside of the cell, Y/N lets out a massive sigh of relief.

“Wow. It was that bad this time, huh?” The guard asks.

“Oh! Um, no. I was just kinda out of it today. This case is keeping me up at night. I need sleep.” She lies, hoping she can get back to her car and as far away from this place as possible. 

“You know…” The guard sighs, beginning to escort her out towards her car. “I work with a lot of horrible bastards, Mr Kemp included.” She nods. “But your regular meetings really seem to be good for him.”

“What do you mean?” She frowns. He shrugs a little.

“I dunno. He’s just been smiling a lot more recently and seems more cheerful to everyone. He’s been talking about you a lot too.” Her blood chills. “Don’t worry! In a good way! Well, I guess as good as it can be coming from someone like him.” He chuckles lightly. “He tells everyone that you’re his friend, and god, some days he talks about you like you hung the moon. So, thanks for that, I guess. Or at least, just for making my job a little easier.” Despite how conflicted she feels about her feelings towards Steve, Y/N can’t stop a small smile appearing on her face at that point. It’s nice to be appreciated…she just wishes it was under better circumstances.

“You’re welcome.” She nods. Soon, they reach her car, and she gets in, waving goodbye to the guard as he starts walking back to the prison. 

Once she’s sure he’s out of sight, Y/N lets out a frustrated cry of “DAMMIT!” slamming her hands against the steering wheel angrily. The tears break free before she can even stop them, and she clutches the steering wheel tightly as she sobs. Why couldn’t she just be attracted to literally anyone else? Why does Steve have to be so nice to her? Why does he have to be a serial killer and a cannibal and not a decent fucking human being that she could actually date without repercussions or judgement? Y/N sits alone for a while, letting all her tears out. She just wants everything: this case, her growing and conflicting feelings for Steve, and her anxieties to stop. She just wants to be normal. 

Y/N looks up, staring at the prison. In all honesty, a part of her wishes she’d never even fucking come here in the first place.

Ever since she had her sex dream about Steve and realised that she would date him, Y/N’s subconscious seems to be deadset on refusing to let her forget it, despite how much she tries to. Both by having Steve’s words to her in the dream and in real life replay in her mind constantly, and making her have more dreams about him. Not all of the dreams are sexual, but worryingly, the sexual dreams are the ones that seem to be occurring more frequently. Even more worryingly, Y/N’s excitement about these dreams seems to amplify too, which also increases her thoughts about Steve. It also doesn’t help that Steve seems hell-bent on touching her every nerve and making her fall even harder for him. The other day, he called her a “good girl”, and she almost whimpered right in front of him. Thankfully, Steve didn’t seem to notice. Or at least, if he did, he didn’t say anything.

Y/N tries every tactic she can to cleanse her mind of Steve and her dreams about him, but none seem to work. Sighing, she leans back against her headboard. There’s only one other way she can think of to try and deal with these thoughts about Steve, and it’s the one she wanted to try the least. However, it has to be done. Rubbing some lube onto her fingers, Y/N gulps. It’s not so much trying to prevent the thoughts anymore…it’s more of an: ‘accept they’re probably there, act on them in private a few times, and then never speak of them again. Rinse and repeat until they’re gone’ type of solution. Y/N spreads her legs and moves her fingers towards her clit, beginning to masturbate. Steve’s face appears in her mind, grinning. 

“Oh, you are a bad girl, aren’t you?” She can hear his voice smirk. “Look at you, the good little FBI Agent who’s too scared to admit she wants to fuck a serial killer like me.” She knows it’s just her imagination speaking to her and what Steve is saying isn’t real, but ‘his’ words only make her pleasure intensify as she continues to pleasure herself. She closes her eyes, still picturing Steve’s grinning face as she sinks deeper and deeper into her bedsheets. Or rather…falls deeper and deeper into Steve’s desires.

“Steve…Steve….” His name comes out in a whimper, and without her control. Although she’s unsure if she would’ve actually tried to stop it. The wetness between her thighs increases, and she can feel the orgasm beginning to build. And still, Steve’s voice is in her brain. 

“Stop pretending you don’t like me or don’t want me. Stop acting like you haven’t noticed that I want you too.” Y/N lets out a moan at those words, one so loud that it takes her aback slightly. She has no idea whether or not this is her imagination or if it’s the feelings she’s tried so hard to bury bursting to the surface, finally free. However, she doesn’t have time to think too hard about that as the orgasm continues to build. She knows she’s close to finishing, and she needs just one little push to go. “You act all tough, but I know deep down…you’re just a filthy little whore. And I look forward to making you even worse.” Y/N curls her toes and screams Steve’s name as the orgasm and the feeling of ecstasy rocks her body as she finishes. 

Afterwards, she lays there for a while, savouring the feel and the high of what just happened. That was the best orgasm she has had in a long time…and it was all thanks to Steve. It feels like a part of her has been awakened, a part that she used to keep buried. Having it finally released like this is surprising…and gratifying. And considering how happy she feels, Y/N realises she’s not sure if she wants to stop them anymore. 

Soon, however, the high begins to fade, and Y/N comes crashing back down to earth. “Oh my god.” She pants. “What have I just done?” As the realisation begins to dawn, only one thought is on her mind: she really must be falling for Steve.

“Are you feeling better now?” Steve asks her the next time she sees him. 

“Yes, thank you.” She lies, hoping he gives up and stops asking before he digs too deep or she’s forced to reveal the one thing about her that she doesn’t want anyone else to know. Instead, Steve doesn’t stop. 

“I’m not sure. Something seems to be off with you recently. You seem out of it.” His blue eyes scan over her curiously, studying her body once more. Oh, if only he knew. Y/N can feel herself getting more nervous as Steve studies her…and she can also feel her body enjoying it too. Given the smile on Steve’s face, he’s clearly enjoying it as well. She gulps. God, please don’t let him find out how she feels about him, or have Steve actually like her. That cannot happen. Trying to ignore the pang in her heart at the thought of Steve not wanting her back, Y/N sighs frustratedly.

Suddenly, however, Steve stops looking over at her, frowning. He looks around the cell, deep in thought. It’s then that she realises that he’s sniffing the air…the air beside her. Y/N watches him do it, her panic slowly growing. “Something smells different. It smells…nice.” He murmurs. Her blood runs cold. He can’t know that she’s been masturbating over him, can he? Surely not. But then again, considering that Steve literally tasted people and sold them for a living…what if he can smell people that well? What if he can smell her cunt? Y/N’s heart almost stops. 

Oddly enough, considering the kinds of killers that she’s been in the same room with…she swears that this is one of the times in her life that she’s felt the most scared. Strangely, however, part of her wants to laugh. Laugh at herself and how stupid she’s being. Because of course the fucking cannibalistic serial killer can smell that she wanked over him. And of course she’s worried that she might be falling for him. Steve turns to her, grinning. “It’s you! You do smell different, Y/N.” Y/N gulps. She wasn’t expecting to have to explain this to Steve at all, let alone right now. 

“Um, I was-” She begins, her stomach churning more than ever. 

“Yes….” Steve trails off, chuckling to himself. “You smell lovely, actually.” He pointedly bites his lip Y/N takes a breath, somewhat ready to try and explain what’s been going on. “Have you been using a new body wash or perfume?” Steve asks, and Y/N immediately breathes a sigh of relief.

“I have Steve. Thank you for noticing.” She lies, thanking whatever higher power there is that she doesn’t have to explain her weird dreams to him. However, she can see Steve staring at her weirdly, one of his brows raised as if he can sense that there’s something more to it. For a moment, Y/N wonders how Steve would react if he knew that she had a sex dream about him. Would he be honoured or find it as repulsive as she does? For some reason, a part of her hopes he would appreciate it.

“I see.” Steve responds. When he doesn’t say anything more, Y/N frowns. She’s so used to Steve having some kind of witty remark to everything he says that she’s grown to expect it. 

“Is that it? You don’t have anything else to say to that?” Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Should I?”

“Well usually, you have some kind of response to everything I say. I was expecting you to say something about how I should keep focusing on the case or whatever you were explaining.” She points out. Almost immediately, she regrets what she said. Despite Steve telling her that she was free to speak her mind, she’s still worried about angering him. After all, it’s easy enough for a serial killer to say something is okay, and a whole other thing getting people to believe it. However, to her surprise, Steve chuckles…and she doesn’t detect any malice behind it.

“You do know a lot about me, don’t you?” He asks. “You’re right. I do usually have a witty remark to say. However, I care a lot about you Y/N, and I’ve grown very fond of you. So, when I notice that you’re not your usual self, or if you don’t feel well…it worries me.” He admits. Y/N gasps slightly, and her stomach twists. She wasn’t expecting him to say that. Of course, when she pretended to be sick, she received a letter from Steve, asking how she was. But she assumed it was simply done out of formality and politeness, or because he had been so used to seeing her that having some time without her would be weird. And Steve did tell her he’s proud of her a few days ago, but she just took it as a compliment despite how weird it felt. For some reason, she never once thought he might actually care about her. In a way, she never thought people like him did care about people.

Y/N’s head feels like it’s spinning, and she has no idea what to say in response. How could she be so stupid to not figure it out before? What else would Steve’s words to her mean? “After all…you are my partner, aren’t you? Of course I care about you.” Steve asks, stepping closer to her. So close that he almost reaches the line separating them from one another.  

“Well, yes, you are.” Steve smiles. 

“Can I ask you something else?”

“For our quid pro quo?” Y/N asks, her mind already racing with possibilities. Steve chuckles, shaking her head.

“No…just for me this time.” Frowning, Y/N nods.

“Are you still scared of me? Do you still see evil when you look at me?” Y/N represses a sigh. Of course he has to ask this now, after everything she’s going through. However, Y/N soon realises that for the first time…she doesn’t know how to answer that question. At least…not right away. Because of course she still thinks he’s evil. He’s a fucking serial killer and a cannibal. Either one of them on their own is bad enough, but them both together is a whole other nightmare. But Steve admitting that he cares about her has opened her up to many new conflicting feelings.

“...Yes, Steve. I’m still scared of you.” She answers, making him smirk. However, what he says next surprises her.

“Oh, are you?” He asks, cocking his head to the side once more. “Somehow…I doubt that.” Immediately, her blood runs cold again, and her heart skips a beat. Oh god. He knows. He knows what she’s been doing. He knows how she feels. Oh god, she’s fucked. He knows. Steve continues to grin at her, almost as if he’s relishing in the confusion and fear he’s causing. 

“What are you talking about?” She asks. Steve doesn’t respond. Y/N can hear footsteps advancing down the hall, knowing they mean that their time together will be up in a matter of seconds. Still, she continues to stare at Steve, her mind and body racing, wondering what the hell he means if he’s noticed the one thing that she’s been trying to hide from him this whole time, silently begging for him to put her out of her misery. 

The guard’s voice fills the room, announcing their time is up, and still, she continues to stare at Steve, waiting for a response to her question. The guard repeats his announcement, but she still holds her ground, waiting for an answer. She’ll stay all fucking night if she has to. “Steve. Answer my question.” She orders. Still no response. “Steve!” She repeats, her voice louder and more panicked. Still nothing.

“Agent Y/N, come on, it’s time for you to go.” The guard calls. Y/N stays where she is.

“Steve! Answer my question!” She demands, almost screaming at him. 

Steve chuckles once more, grinning slightly. He leans in closer, so close that his body almost brushes hers. It sends another chill up her spine…as well as another burst of excitement. “You didn’t step back this time.” He whispers. She can hear the sound of the cord attaching him to the wall straining, knowing it means that he’s almost crossing the line between them, the line keeping her safe and the one she swore she’d never cross. Her eyes flicker down, and she realises Steve’s right. She’s right at the edge of the line. And yet, she still doesn’t step back. Not because she can’t…but because she’s not sure if she wants to anymore. Steve chuckles. “You’re so close to me. So close that I can whisper into your ear.” He watches as she breathes a small sigh of relief, yet still shudders slightly in fear. “So close that I can almost touch you…and I think we’d both like it if we did.” 

After finishing her meeting with Steve, Y/N heads back to the office. Her boss called everyone for an important meeting about the case, and given that he called her to make sure she would be there, Y/N knows she can’t miss it…despite how much Steve’s words are still playing on her mind. “I think we’d both like it if we did.” He smirks. Despite Steve’s constant habit of annoying her, Y/N feels like he’s not pretending this time. And to her, there’s only one reason why that might be the case.

He must know how she’s been feeling about him and what she’s been doing. She’s so fucked. Maybe that’s what this meeting is about? Has Steve somehow already told her boss what he thinks she’s been up to, and she’s about to be taken off the case? Her stomach churns with anxiety, and she hopes that’s not what’s about to happen. And yet, for some reason…she seems more worried about losing her connection with Steve than she is about being taken off the case. God, what is wrong with her? She really needs to sort out her feelings once and for all.

Reaching the office, Y/N heads up to the room where the meeting is being held. As soon as she opens the door, the eyes of all her co-workers turn to see her. Immediately, Y/N starts wishing she was anywhere else. She heads to an empty seat near the front of the room, looking at her heels and trying to avoid all the stares and whispers directed her way. Taking a seat, her cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“Where have you been? Visiting your friend?” The man beside her whispers, a slight smirk playing on his lips. Y/N knows they’re just trying to get to her, and she ignores him. 

“He’s not my friend. It’s just a job.” She hears a scoff and the people around her muttering:

“Yeah, right.” 

“Stuck up bitch.” 

Y/N sighs, trying to ignore how upset their words make her and prevent the slowly building tears from falling down her cheeks. Memories flash through her mind again, memories she tried so hard to lock away and ignore…yet still somehow always manage to rear their ugly heads. 

“Stupid bitch.”

“What makes you think you can work at the FBI?” 

“I give it two days before she runs back home to Mommy and Daddy.” Y/N hisses under her breath, ducking her head so nobody sees her teary eyes. Even though she works with all sorts of monsters…Y/N swears that sometimes her co-workers can be just as cruel. 

“You’re a smart woman, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you share your thoughts.” Suddenly, Steve’s words echo in her mind, cutting through all the voices of doubt. “I’m proud of you.” And despite how much she knows it might be wrong, she finds solace in his words. So much solace, in fact, that a smile crosses her features. And for just a moment, Y/N realises how fortunate she is to have a reassuring voice like Steve’s in her mind. Because after all, it’s nice to have someone appreciate you…even if that person has a huge body count like Steve’s. At least somebody is proud of her. Maybe she and Steve are closer to the label of friends than she thought they were.

Y/N sighs. God, it really shows how insane her life is when the only person outside of her work who has a high opinion of her and who might be her friend is a fucking cannibal. A cannibal she might be in love with. She really needs a fucking break. Thankfully, the voice of her boss soon sounds in the room, cutting through her thoughts and making everyone look up.

“Okay, hello, everyone! Thank you all for joining this meeting today.” The room fills with a chorus of greetings. “Now, I have an important announcement to make today. There will be a few changes around here, especially considering how we approach this case.” Y/N frowns. What the hell does that mean? Then, she notices a man walking into the room, dressed in an impeccable navy blue suit. The man stands beside her boss and scans the room with a soft smile. Y/N’s eyebrow raises. He’s pretty cute. The man catches her eye, and her cheeks flush slightly. She averts her gaze, hoping she doesn’t embarrass herself too much. However, out of the corner of her eye, she swears she can see the man chuckling softly and smiling again. 

“Thanks to the incredibly hard work of Y/N….” Her boss trails off, gesturing to her with a large grin. Y/N’s happiness stops, and her stomach drops. Her boss has just given her co-workers even more fuel to hate her. Sure enough, she can soon hear comments and laughter under people’s breaths. In an attempt to ignore them, she looks at the man standing beside her boss. To her surprise, he’s frowning, as if he hears their comments too. He also looks slightly concerned for her, making a small smile grow on her lips. Whoever this guy is, maybe she’ll finally have someone at work to fight in her corner. “...We have decided to start working through Steve Kemp’s list of clientele to see if any of them fit the profile. But since this list includes people worldwide, and therefore outside our jurisdiction, the CIA has graciously decided to assist us, and they have sent over their best Agent to help us.” The man beside her boss chuckles. 

“Oh please, I doubt that’s true.” The man’s eyes go back to Y/N, and he gives her a small smile. One that makes her heart rate rise even more, and her smile grows bigger. Maybe his arrival is a sign of better things to come, and perhaps she doesn’t have to worry about Steve after all. 

“He’ll be working with us for a few months, and he’ll especially be working closely with Y/N, using Kemp’s intel.” Y/N gives a small wave to identify herself to the Agent. He smiles, clearly happy to put a face to her name. “Oh! I almost forgot to introduce you!” Her boss chuckles. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Agent Nick Fowler.”

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[blacksailskmeme]

Flint and Silver have a relationship. Silver and Madi have a relationship. Flint and Madi are drift compatible level allies, know each other deeply, trust each other implicitly, respect one another fundamentally. All three of them know this. Sometimes Flint gets a little too much wound up and in his head, neglecting his needs, and needs a space to find himself again. He trusts Madi to help him get there.

D/S, submissive Flint, stone dom Madi. Non romantic, deeply intimate and trusting, actual sexual acts and/or release up to filler.

Potential angles: for added angst, option to set in the time they both think Silver is dead. For a voyeuristic flavour, option to have Silver hear about the scene(s) from either or both of his partners after the fact. Does this add to the enjoyment? Create tension, conflict, or jealousy? Do they encourage this in each other, or is it a secret, however well or poorly kept?

I just want Flint to have a dom who understands his conflicts and responsibilities, and for Madi to be fully filled in on the dynamics between her partner and his captain/her ally without being left behind by them.

This is PROMPT #91

AO3 Collection (if you like this prompt, please submit a fill of at least 500 words to this anonymous collection with the prompt number in the summary/description. If you need help submitting or tagging, please reach out to event host @jaynovz)