#for the record i wouldn’t think twice about this if they had released it in the merch store with no announcement
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chemnections · 5 months ago
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i am almost not annoyed by their unprofessional official social media account not knowing how to add a link - you can’t even copy or paste it >:(
(08/06/24)
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tikosblogg · 6 months ago
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BESTFRIENDS pt 2..
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Summary: Noah comes home from a bad day at the studio. You decide to help him take out his frustrations.
Warning: oral (m receiving), fingering, unprotected p in v sex, virginity loss. Let me know if there is anything else.
A/N: you guys asked for it and I delivered!!! I really hope you guys enjoy it!!❤️
I laid across the couch watching my show, when the front door slammed open then shut causing me to jump out of my skin. I quickly sat up seeing Noah barge in, and stomp up the stairs to his room, clearly pissed. Noah and the guys were at the studio today, recording a song. They weren’t supposed to be home for another two hours. Confused, I stood from my seat, grabbing the remote and cutting off the tv. The front door opened again, and the rest of the guys walked in.
“What’s going on? Is he okay?” They all turned to me, jolly being the first to speak. “He sounded a tiny bit hoarse today, and he’s pissed off. You know how he is. Everything has to be perfect.” I nodded my head, looking back towards the stairs. Noah is always so hard on himself for no reason. “Poor guy….” I frowned, thinking about all negative thoughts probably racing through his head right now.
I crossed my arms over my chest, walking over to them as Nick spoke up. “Yea we’ll give him some space. Let him cool off.” I nodded in agreement. Noah and I haven’t really talked much since the other night. It’s not that it’s awkward or anything. He’s just been so busy with meetings, and going to the studio. We haven’t really had time. Jolly nodded towards the front door, breaking me from my thoughts. “We’re gonna head out, maybe grab some food and hangout. Wanna come?” They all turned towards me awaiting my response.
I smiled before politely declining. “Thanks for the invite, but I gotta shower and get to sleep. I have work in the morning. You guys have fun.” I gave them each a hug as they walked out the door. Locking up and heading upstairs, I stopped midway into my room looking over at Noah’s door. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just check on him? I walked over, knocking twice. After a few seconds his door swung open.
“Jolly I told you I don’t-“ he stopped mid sentence, realizing it was me. “Oh hey, sorry.” He moved back, silently welcoming me into his room. I walked in, walking straight to his bed taking a seat. “What’s going on Noah?” He huffed plopping down into his computer chair, resting his face in his hands. “I sounded awful today. My throat is hoarse, and couldn’t find the right pitch.”
“Noah you couldn’t sound awful if you tried. You have an amazing voice. Even if it’s a little hoarse.” I gave him a small reassuring smile, as he sat up meeting my eyes. “Thanks sweetheart ….I just hate when things don’t go right. I’m so frustrated.” An idea instantly popped in my mind. Was it a good one? Maybe not. But it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.
I slowly slid off the bed onto my knees, crawling the short distance between us to right between his thighs. He froze, as his eyes widened. My hands running up each of his thighs, giving them a light squeeze. “What are you doing y/n?” He made no move to stop me, so I continued. “Well you helped me when I was frustrated…I feel it’s only right I return the favor.”
I softly rubbed my hands up down his thighs, waiting for his response. “Baby you don’t have to-“ I quickly cut him off with a smile. “I want to.” He slowly nodded his head, as I went straight for his belt. His dick was already stiff, growing more the closer I got to it. I pulled the belt open, unbuttoning his jeans and finally pulling him out.
I’ve never seen a dick in real life, but I can guarantee his is this most beautiful one I’ll ever see. He’s also huge. He gasped as I finally wrapped my fingers around it. He was so thick my fingertips barely touched. I slowly pumped him a few times looking up at him. He threw his back against the chair releasing a moan. His tip was angry red, and already leaking.
I bent down, and gave it a few kitten licks. He groaned bucking his hips up. “Fuck..” I felt my stomach erupt in butterflies. I parted my lips finally wrapping them around him, taking him in as far as I could. I instantly gagged, pulling back up. His hand flew to my cheek, lifting my face to his. “Don’t force it baby…take your time.”
I nodded my head, pumping him a few more times before taking him back into my mouth. I sucked the tip, and his hand flew to my hair tangling it into his fist. I moaned around him, as he softly tugged it. I could feel my shorts getting soaked. I decided to forego panties tonight, since I planned on showering anyways. Looks like it worked in my favor.
I slid my hand down into my shorts, applying pressure to my aching clit. I took him further into my mouth, until he hit the back of my throat. I fought hard not to gag again, and bobbed my head up and down. The sinful noises leaving Noah’s mouth, only made me wetter. I rubbed my clit faster, moaning around him.
Noah grabbed my arm, removing my hand from my shorts, and pulling me up to him. “Is sucking my cock making you wet baby?” His voice just above a whisper. I whined at his filthy words, nodding my head yes. He stuck his tongue out, running it slowly across my lips. I whimpered leaning in, finally pressing our mouths together.
We shared a heated wet kiss. He shoves his tongue in my mouth, and I softly sucked on it causing a grown to leave his throat. He took my bottom lip between his teeth, softly biting down. My breath hitched, as he released it pulling me to my feet. “C’mon.” He walked us to his bed, pulling me onto it with him. He laid back, making me kneel on the bed beside him,
I leaned down, quickly taking him back into my mouth. “Fuck baby…your mouth feels amazing.” He groaned, running his hand through my hair. I gripped the base with my hand, taking the rest of him in my mouth. He placed his other hand on my ass, gently rubbing and squeezing it. I moaned around his dick, bobbing my head faster.
He bucked his hips up, his tip meeting the back of my throat each time. He moved my shorts aside, running his fingers up and down my slit. “Fuck baby, you’re so wet…you love my cock in your mouth don’t you?” I pulled off of him, continuing to pump his dick. “Fuck Noah….yes.”
He finally slid his two middle fingers into my soaked pussy, slowly pumping them in and out. I whined, arching my ass higher in the air, his fingers hitting deeper. He grabbed my throat gently, pulling me into another searing kiss. I was panting at this point. I needed more. “Please Noah…I want you.” His fingers halted, directing my eyes to his.
“Y/n we don’t have to do this….I don’t want you to feel pressured.” I felt my heart flutter, as I pecked his lips softly. “I don’t….please Noah.” We continued staring at each until I tried again. “Noah…I need you.” His eyes were almost black, as he quickly pulled his fingers out of me, flipping us over.
He hovered over me, planting his lips on mine. He sat up straddling my thighs, quickly tugging my oversized shirt, and shorts off of me. He shoved his face into my neck, licking and sucking as many marks as could onto it. “Oh fuck Noah.” He peppered kisses down my neck, until he reached my tits. He sucked my nipple into his mouth, pinching and pulling on my other one with his fingers.
I arched my chest into his face, clawing my nails down his back under his shirt. He released my nipple with a pop, groaning at my nails digging into his skin. “Fuck baby keep doing that.” He sat up, pulling off his shirt. I spread my thighs as far as they’d go, as he laid between them. “Tell me if it’s too much, and I’ll stop.”
I cupped his cheeks in my hands, pecking his nose. “I will, I promise.” He lined himself up with my entrance looking at me one more time, before slowly pushing in. I gasped loudly at the big stretch, the air leaving my lungs. Noah stopped, turning my head towards his, with a worried expression. “Talk to me baby..” it didn’t even really hurt, it was just a dull ache.
But the new feeling was almost overwhelming. “Keep going.” My strained voice was just above a whisper. He nodded his head, and continued slowly pushing in. When he was fully in, I felt so fucking full. He gave me a few seconds, before slowly thrusting his hips. In a matter of minutes, I was moaning whimpering mess.
I’ve never felt this amount of pleasure in my life. He kept his slow pace, grunting in my ear until I wrapped my legs around his waist. “Faster Noah, please. I can take it.” He captured my lips in a sweet kiss, moving his hips faster and harder. “Oh fuck yes.” I gasped, shoving my face into his neck. “Shit baby, your pussy is so fucking tight.” I felt his dick twitch inside of me, as I was so close to finishing.
“I’m….Im gonna cum.” I whimpered, as pounded into me harder. “Go ahead babygirl, cum on my cock.” That was all I needed, as my orgasm crashed over me. “Just like that, good girl.” He pounded faster, until he pulled out. He stroked his dick a couple times, before releasing all over my chest and stomach. “Fuck.” He dropped his head down, before leaning forward placing a kiss to my forehead and getting up. “I’ll be right back.”
He walked over into his bathroom, coming back out with a wet washcloth. I laid there my body spent, feeling like jello. He wiped the remaining mess, and threw the rag into his hamper. He crawled back onto the bed settling down beside me. “How was it sweetheart?” His voice sounded so small. Almost like he was afraid of my response.
I looked over at him, the biggest smile on my face. “Fucking amazing.”
QA/N: sorry to kind of leave you with a cliff hanger, but I’m almost tempted to turn this into a mini series….or at least do a part 3. Idk what do you guys think???
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lo1k-diamonds · 6 months ago
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Too Sweet 💜 Chapter 3 - But then you wake up for the sunrise
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PAIRING: Demon!Yoongi x (f)reader
SUMMARY: Coming from unabashed wealth has its perks — like never having to lift a finger in your life. When that suddenly changes, you end up at a crossroads: how far will you go to have everything you want?
WORD COUNT: 8.9k
GENRE: Crossroad Demon AU (Sloth), smut, angst
RATING: R (explicit)
WARNINGS: implied trauma and abuse, including neglect growing up, unprotected sex, biting, pain mixing w/ pleasure, choking and breath play, anal play, degrading thoughts, nipple play, blowjob + face fucking, subspace and aftercare, crying, fighting
A.N. Getting attached to your demon comes with perks... and vulnerabilities. Here's to my favorite part 💜
Masterpost | Masterlist | AO3 | Wattpad | < Previous Chapter : Next Chapter >
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The high yet soothing ringing of the Tibetan Singing Bowl along with the water streaming down a gentle creek permeated your ears and all around you. You were lying face down on a massage table, naked with your hair carefully tied in a bun so your masseuse could spread the perfumed oils all over your back. As the wooden cushion striker rolled on the bowl to emit the healing verberations, you tried not to twist your nose at the recording of the rivulet. You supposed your money could get you anything but not a natural brook at that spa and resort you owned.
Your masseuse finished after removing the excess with a warm towel and bowed deeply before exiting the room. A moment later, the bowl stopped ringing as that person left as well, and you got up languidly. You let the towels that once covered you fall to the floor without much thought and reached for the warm robe waiting for you. This session had become something of a routine for you and as such, you knew exactly where to go to return to your suite up on the last floor.
You supposed you could just buy another spa and resort somewhere where there was a creek. Maybe in Tibet or Nepal; someplace untamed and breaming with healing energy. Not that it would solve anything, you mused as you got in the elevator. Those massages were good but they didn’t fix you and you didn’t believe a natural brook or even a monastery full of monks could help with that. You chuckled to yourself and brushed the bracelets around your wrists gently; you wondered how they would take the company if you ever engendered such a situation.
Truthfully, despite your searches, you were convinced that there was only one way to actually relax. To the best of your knowledge, there was no treatment or experience you hadn’t tried, and all they ever did was push the tension. You could feel it going from one corner to the other, one muscle to the next, tight within you without ever releasing. So far there had only been one way to accomplish that and you were starting to not care for any other way.
You thought getting high could have been a way but you wouldn’t make that mistake twice. After he had healed you a month back, you hadn’t touched anything but tobacco and alcohol. This was an accomplishment for you, but the real achievement was what you had found to replace your former addictions.
It started with touching your bracelets and wondering until you wished him to your presence and were startled when he came. You still remembered his piercing eyes just staring from across your suite, wondering why you would have called him when you had nothing you could possibly want.
Nothing except for him.
“I need a private jet,” you had pouted, unable to look away from him. As usual, he was all in black, looking like an executive about to have a neat whisky and fuck his secretary senseless. 
The way his black shirt stretched when he chuckled and shrugged entranced you. “You have endless money, just buy one.”
“But I don’t have endless time,” you rebutted, a sly smile ebbing as you congratulated yourself for thinking so fast on your feet. “Buying takes time, asking you is way faster.”
His eyes squinted ever so slightly as if seeing through you, “Even if it costs you?”
You grinned, “It’s a fine balance.”
He had said nothing, only stood there looking at you, but you were daring. You walked up to him, gave him a cheeky nod, and got on your tiptoes to kiss him, just like you had days before to be healed of your addictions. Your heartbeat was now as strong as then, and while you were unsure whether the warm buzz in your bones was from the excitement or the expense, you couldn’t help the fluttering inside your chest. Because he didn’t push you back, nor did he break up your kiss.
Your phone started ringing and so you parted ways yourself, only to be told that the jet purchase had finally gone through and everything had been handled. You had laughed then and thrown your arms around his neck to kiss him again, and that was the beginning.
At first, you asked for simple things, most of which just filled you with curiosity: a secret, the answer to a current dilemma, the draft or script of a book or play you wanted to have access to beforehand. Every time you would use your time as an excuse, knowing very well that by doing so, it was only making it even shorter. Yet you did it with a wide smile because it earned you a kiss every time, sometimes even more than one, until it led to the real high you craved ever since you met him.
“You’re keeping tabs, right?” You would joke immediately, before he was even soft inside you, the sting still on your asscheeks as he rolled his eyes and moved away.
Regardless of his demeanor, he’d always show, take your kiss, and deliver. And all you could do was laugh and sigh because nothing compared to that. The thrill, the victory, the validation, the sleep — everything that came with him gave flare to your existence, and nothing compared.
You strutted across your suite to your bedroom, taking a deep comforting breath. You drew the black curtains to your luxurious bedroom and opened the windows to let the warm summer breeze invade the space. Your lips twitched in a mischievous smile at the thought of screeching at the top of your lungs for the whole building to hear.
You let the robe pool on the floor before you got on the bed. You took a deep breath and bent down in a downward dog pose, stretching yourself to retain a semblance of relaxation and maybe warm up a bit. After a couple of long breaths, you lowered to your forearms before collapsing your chest and knees into a puppy pose. That was when your neck finally stretched the way you liked, and when you brushed the bracelets around your wrists with a deep desire.
“What the fuck do you want this time?”
A shiver ran up your spine, mixing with the breeze puckering your skin. Your eyes were closed but you could just imagine the scene: you, with your hair up in a bun naked over the black silk sheets with your ass up while your chest pressed to the mattress, and him, behind you with a privileged view of exactly how ready you were for him.
“What are you doing, kitten?”
“Stretching,” you voiced calmly, resisting wiggling your ass. Teasing him was a tricky game; you couldn’t risk him leaving. Even if he never had without hearing you out first, you didn’t want it to ever happen. “And waiting.”
Silence stretched aside from the breeze billowing the curtains, but you didn’t break form to turn and see. You were confident he had his eyes on you just by the way your guts started slowly churning.
“Come on,” you beckoned, voice low and seductive. “Come make me feel—”
A whimper cut you off and blended with your smugness quickly. 
Good.
You didn’t need to ask anymore; it was as if he could read your thoughts. That had to be why he was pushing a finger inside you crudely, unbothered by how unprepared you were. 
Maybe because he knew how ready you already were. “Again?”
A quiet whine left your lips as they parted, “I want to relax.”
You just knew he could feel it — the way your muscles were relaxing as though a wave was washing over them. Inch by inch, from your core to your extremities — decompressing, releasing your tension slowly as he probed your wet hole with a single finger.
“Time… is ticking,” he said calmly and you cried, toes curling with how utterly surrendered you were. He had pushed in another finger almost hiddenly until he parted them inside you to grossly stretch you. “And you still haven't lifted a finger.”
Blood rushed to your cheeks with your moan, forcing you to grab the sheets as you hid your face. It was extremely difficult to acknowledge a word he was saying when both your mind and body were screaming for pleasure.
“You speak— as though— I have no time,” your voice thinned with every movement of his fingers with your nails gripping onto the sheets.
“It’s not that you have no time,” he acceded calmly despite your loud and long outcry — he was pushing his fingers into your wet walls until you were almost curling and breaking position. “It’s that you don’t value the time you do have.”
You were starting to sweat; both the physical effort and his fingers pressing a familiar spot inside you were creating an uncontrollable fire in your gut. You parted your lips and only a breath made it out as you shut your eyes and let the blazing wave engulf you. It was easy to become adrift with the sensations, but the threat of his receding fingers pushed you to speak.
“I value it. I value it so much—” He pressed harder, maybe to break you, and you moaned, bucking your hips to both alleviate and intensify the feeling.
He hummed, “Maybe.”
You didn’t answer because you could feel the switch in his tone. It had happened before, in other encounters you two had, and it lit up a secret flame inside you. His free hand groped the swell of your ass, squeezing it roughly as you burned from his touch, his eyes, and his ministrations. You had noticed it before and you suspected it was the reason you got away with it — he wanted you. You couldn’t quite pin down why it was that he didn’t turn his back on you or that he gave you what you wanted each time, but you had the theory that he wanted it just as much. That somehow, you did something for him too. You didn’t know if it was because he got a bit of your soul every time, because you were bratty, or just because he wanted to fuck you, but you enjoyed it either way.
You let a pleasure wave shake you as you bit on your lower lip; his fingers stretching you, pressing squelching sounds out of you could only mean he was preparing you, and the thought alone melted you. That was until his fingers twisted inside you and you felt something change on the outside and press your puckered hole.
You whimpered, both wanting whatever would come next and bordering overstimulation when his thumb pressed and got in. You immediately tightened as much as possible on a reflex and he actively bypassed your efforts by pushing in roughly. His thumb settled inside up to the node all while his other fingers curled and pressed on your walls, making you jolt. You wiggled, wanting to escape only for him to slide in and out with every movement. He ended up deeper than before and you cried out with the pressure sparking pleasure that had you throbbing in a vicious cycle.
Your eyes were shut and your nerve endings were on fire as your body utterly relaxed under his touch, “Please.”
You didn’t know what you were asking for, if anything for him to continue, maybe for him to even ruin you. And as always, he seemed to read your mind.
You felt something wet and cold drip down on your ass, going around his finger only for him to take it and press it in. The sensation unnerved you and had you jolting forward despite the odd angle on your neck, but he didn’t let you go far. He gripped your hair bun with his free hand and forced you to get on your forearms and fall back into him, and that drew a guttural moan out of you.
His thumb was all the way inside you, but the rest of his hand was replaced by his cock. It was the only thing that could push into you, stretch you so painfully well in its entirety until he was tucked to the hilt. You had tears in your eyes and whimpered when he swelled inside you, purposefully pressing to your cervix so you knew what would come. And you knew and still wanted it even if you’d cry the whole time. Though you suspected you wouldn't. It turned out you loved the sting and the way you felt full and relaxed under his touch.
You were so at ease you were spasming around his dick, sighing with his grip on your hair that was keeping your back taut, and maybe he didn’t like that. He let your hair go and you didn’t slack off, but he still smacked your ass so strongly it echoed in the room. It sparked a whiny moan as the pleasure shot through you, and again and again with every hit. Your hips swung to tease him, ask for more, ablate the sting, and feel him even deeper, and he kept going. He pushed you to euphoric levels as you fucked yourself on him; it was paradise.
“Is this what you wanted, kitten?”
A laugh bubbled out of you before you could think — yes, yes it was. But as you moaned and kept going, despite the respite from his slaps, you thought you could push him a little.
“Actually— I wanted a mirror as the head of the bed or— to cover the wall— right there, you see?”
You tried raising a finger and pointing at the wall above the headboard but it fell quickly. He had snapped his hips into you as if he wanted to push your soul out, imposing the rhythm he wanted. You fought the urge to curl onto yourself, so melted by the impact of every thrust, that you couldn’t find your form. Not until he pulled you by the hair to meet his thrusts viciously, pulling your head up simultaneously.
Your eyes crossed in the mirror in front of you and your senses jolted awake. The head of the bed was now just a mirror from the mattress to the ceiling letting you see everything: you on all fours with your tits bouncing with every plunge, your red asscheeks, your hair in a ball inside his fist, his other hand busy with what you guessed was a full thumb inside your asshole, him fully clothed in black, snapping his hips to your hips to drive you nuts, and finally his eyes.
His dark piercing eyes locked with yours and they caught your insides on fire. You weren’t just a secretary he was fucking senseless, you were so much less. You were not worth getting his clothes off for, nor had a worthwhile touch. You were a body with a set of holes that he wanted to use, to make gush, and it twisted your guts, the wet sounds superposing almost to the slap of his hips. The hunger inside you to become more while knowing that he was fucking you because he wanted to use you, no matter how worthless you were, almost drew you to your peak but you waited. You waited, with eyes never parting from his through the mirror, for him to deny it, enforce it, or do something. 
Yet all he did was feed into that perversity, “Fucking greedy cunt.”
You clenched and you could have laughed if he wasn’t so deep inside you, stretching you to the point you couldn’t articulate, let alone react. Whether he was calling you a cunt or saying your core was greedy for his cock, you loved it — both were true.
You arched your back even more for him, needing to feel him kissing your sensitive cervix. It shook you with the sting of every poke, but then you stopped breathing. You stood still, letting him rut into you. He fucked you, not desperately, but without hesitation, with sweat dripping down his neck as his Adam's apple bobbed. He used you and abused you but he was right there for you.
You whimpered and got your hand to rub your clit as soon as possible before that wave could wane, and it crashed. You cried your pleasure as if you had to proclaim it to the world, with a particular pitch to account for the stinging, only to feel his hips stuttering. Your eyes shot open so you could see his squinting, focused on himself disappearing between your ass cheeks until he shot his load inside you with a groan.
Your lips curved in a smile, pleased with the way you milked him right. You sighed, letting your face hit the mattress with the relaxation finally settling, even as his cum started to drip down your thighs.
You felt him move a little but didn’t bother thinking about it. Only when something touched your lips did you open your eyes quizically. His fingers were wet with a white fluid and you stuck your tongue out immediately, inviting him inside your mouth. 
You moaned and clenched around his cock and thumb still inside you. The taste of your cums together was a unique type of drug that left you breathless and stupid on the spot. You suckled on his fingers, moaning the dopamine discharge lighting up your brain until he pulled away, and you whimpered. But not too much; you sighed to yourself. He’d keep on feeding you that unique blend — you trusted him.
“Was that all you wanted?”
You chuckled, “No.”
He cursed and rolled over; in a flash, you were lying with your back over his chest. Your ass was stretched and would slowly shrink back to normal, but his hard dick was still inside you. You chuckled as he heaved a deep breath, crossing his arms behind his head. You didn’t move a muscle.
“What is it this time?”
You pressed your lips, “Well, I was thinking about… an exotic place. An untamed, brimming with energy place. With a creek. You could get it for me.” He was silent behind you but you could feel him breathing. You chuckled, “Bonus points if it comes with a monastery full of monks.”
You jolted with the piercing pain of him pinching your nipples. You reached for his hands to incentivize him to loosen the squeeze, but he didn’t let up at all.
“Why would you need that?”
His voice was rougher and you imagined there was a hint of annoyance with your suggestion. You laughed quietly and he pinched harder, making a cold torrent tase you from head to toe. You held on to his wrists and pressed your heels to the mattress, but otherwise stayed absolutely still.
“For my meditation and healing.”
“You have money; just buy a place like that.”
“Can you imagine how long that will take? It took centuries with the jet, imagine in a foreign place like that?” You were pouting, “You can do that for me.”
One hand of his let go and you sighed and squirmed, thinking he was warming up to you. Only said hand wrapped around your throat, jolting you to press even more into him. You were even more vulnerable.
“Thought you said you valued your time.”
“And I do,” you rasped, heart beating with adrenaline. Your core throbbed around him in reaction, and you closed your eyes. He was so hard inside you. The way he was keeping you from riding him was such an unspeakable waste. “Can’t you tell?”
You tried rolling your hips and he pulled you by the neck harder, stretching you til your vertebrae popped. His hand pinched around your tits before he sank his teeth into your neck, making you writhe and moan uncontrollably. You were at the edge again, overwhelmed, unable to relax and release unless he guided you there.
He started moving and you sighed, fusing back into him without a trace of resistance. He had parted his legs and taken support on the mattress to swing his hips to fuck you slowly, stealing your breath away. You could only stay in place, whimpering and crying out your delight as he used you to his liking.
Even as he sped up, turning your insides to mush, you were still curious. Your wetness and his cum were dripping down your ass and you were burning with the lack of oxygen. The way his teeth were sinking into your skin had you gritting your teeth, and bliss was a moment away. But you wanted to feel it for yourself.
You let go of his wrist and traced down your body all the way to your core, touching lightly around your entrance only to quiver. Fuck, was he big and hard, no wonder you were burning so finely under his stretch. You moaned, both from the feeling of him pistoning inside you and the wet thick length brushing your fingers to use you, until his hand caught your attention. His fingers sank under your jawline just a bit to coax you to look up, and you gasped.
Above you, the ceiling had become a mirror and the view was breathtaking. Your sweaty and abused body was red and glowing, but what destroyed you was him. The sight of his cock ramming into your messy folds, glistening with every stab, and of his dark eyes set on you as he bit down your neck, not letting go of you, pushing you to your finish line. 
He saw it and acted on it, and you thought maybe it was the plan all along. The hand squeezing your nipple was over your clit in a second, rubbing it perfectly and with every thrust a little more, until he let the blood flood through your brain again. You burst like a firework, arching even more into him. His teeth sank deeper, as did his cock, and his fingers kept you cumming. You trashed your legs, seeing white with such bliss, unable to come down for a while.
By then, he was licking your neck, stuffed inside you to keep his cum in while he took whiffs of your sugary white raspberry scent. You could have mentioned it or thought about it, but the lethargy spreading across your body didn’t let you.
You were ready to fall asleep when he moved to have you look up at him. He was sweaty and beautiful, with an intense gaze that gave you goosebumps. His eyebrow twitched and you sighed.
“I take it back.”
Your eyes were heavy so you didn’t catch the curve on the corner of his lips, “Good girl.”
Your haze was imposing but something perked your attention, making it impossible to fade into unconsciousness. His arms were keeping you above him, and he wasn’t leaving. You were normally too exhausted to even think and would wake up in to empty room, so you didn’t know what happened immediately after. You always assumed he just vanished without glancing twice but he was still there this time, with his arms around you. 
You didn’t want to miss the opportunity. You sighed, “How did you… end up like this?” You were mumbling, fighting sleep. He stayed quiet and immobile, but you could hear him breathe near your forehead. “Were you… born one?”
You finally felt him shifting a bit under you, though his arms stayed firm, keeping you in place. “One?”
Your lips trembled before you whispered, “Demon.”
You were fearful but he chuckled, “I was born one; we all are. Reborn one,” he admitted and you furrowed your brow ever so slightly despite your closed eyes. 
“How?” You breathed. It could be a dream.
“How…” 
You didn’t dare open your eyes and break that spell; you imagined he was thinking, his mind wandering off.
“I made a deal, same as you, a long time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know,” he smirked and shrugged. “Time has different meanings in different places.”
“Sounds interesting,” you cooed before nibbling on your lip. Your heart was beating fast with the thrill of that simple exchange.
It shook even more with his quiet laugh near your ear, “That’s because you’re ignoring the obvious.” His voice lost humour and you could imagine the detached eyes looking down at you. “None of this is good.”
You opened your eyes instantly, eager to catch that spark before it could vanish. His sharp eyes were set on yours and you almost wavered, but he had you. He was showing and saying more than ever before and for the first time in months it felt like you could have a conversation.
“How can it not be good,” you whispered, eyeing the straight line of his lips. “When it helped me so much?”
The line showed apprehension, “Are you sure it did?”
You almost scoffed, “Absolutely certain. No one has ever been so kind to me.”
“This isn’t kindness.”
You started laughing, despite your best efforts. Even though his demeanor screamed severity and his eyes showed sternness, you just couldn’t help yourself. Your laugh wasn’t mocking, it was almost jolly.
You cuddled more into his embrace, “It is. What? You’re toying with me? Of course you are, everyone is,” you shrugged, pulling his arms more around you. “It’s all everyone has ever done. Toy and use. You’re no different, but you are.” You paused, trying to put into words the nuance you had experienced only with him. “‘Cause at least you give me something in return. You’re the only one that has ever given me something in return.”
Your eyes lowered with the scattered recollections of what you had once sought to forget, but quickly they were back up. Your heart shook with what they found — there was a hint of emotion on an otherwise objective and unphased marble expression. At that moment, you were certain that your connection was not imagined.
“What was your deal?”
He didn’t even blink but you stayed put, still calm and relaxed, not just from your previous activities, but also because you were still together.
“What did you sell your soul for?”
Your insistence tipped the scales somehow because he sighed, “A way out. A way to leave and live out my dreams.”
Your eyebrows twitched curiously, “Did it work?”
He smirked and you finally saw a trace of emotions behind his eyes, “Yeah, but not really. That’s why details matter.”
Come now, kitten.
His entrancing voice still enchanted your spirit to this day. You nodded, “You didn’t know what you wanted and just said a way out?”
“I knew what I wanted,” he said, shifting under you but not with discomfort. He sounded assertive and you had a hunch that he was proud of himself. Your eyebrows twitched quizzically and he continued, “I wanted to be a musician, but I didn’t know what that meant.”
Your expression soured as your eyes lowered and you gave him a detached nod. 
Your mind was about to pull you into the very dread you had been running from for years when he said, “It was my fault.”
You frowned, looking for the reason why he was telling you this. 
The subtlest line sunk between his eyebrows, “I let myself go down that road. Others might have pushed or joined me along, but it was my life. My decision.”
You wondered then for the first time, with seriousness, if he could read your mind. Could he know your secrets? What you had been through? What you once dreamed and how it had all turned to shambles?
You pursed your lips, denying that idea. No matter how well he fucked you, that was probably impossible. Besides, it wasn’t your fault. What had happened to you, regardless of your stupidity, was not your fault. Whatever he was talking about, it was certainly only about himself.
Which made you wonder, “Is that why you keep telling me to figure myself out?”
He didn’t answer, he only clenched his jaw.
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You sighed as you glanced up at the ceiling from your black silked bed. You were feeling down today and not even peeking up cheered you up. The mirrors were gone, sadly, so you could only remember how good it had been to feel him and talk to him right there, on your bed.
It had been months since you last asked for him; way more than you would have liked. It was your own doing, however. You were the one who decided to not call him so soon and actually try to do something with yourself. It turned out that it was easier said than done. There was only one thing your soul ever sought doing and you avoided it like the devil would a cross. Because of this, you were aimless and the temptation to feed your mind something else so you’d stop ruminating on old thoughts and pains was becoming hard to resist.
You missed the validation. You thought of your parents and the very little they had done for you in that regard, and it irritated you. They were something else you should avoid thinking at all costs for your well-being, and yet now that they popped up, you were annoyed. And since you couldn’t and wouldn’t ever get their validation, you thought of the one you did get.
Without words, just demonstrations — he had always shown up for you. He disagreed with your lifestyle and thought your wishes were futile and shallow, but still showed up every time. The last time had been the closest you had felt to being cared for, even though your storylines didn’t match completely. But they didn’t have to — he showed it in the way that he cared enough to prevent you from losing yet another piece of your soul. And you needed to feel that again.
You brushed your bracelets and heard a voice before your fingers lost contact, “Really?”
You sat up with giddiness, as if he had just surprised you, then got up and across the bedroom to reach him.
“What could you possibly want this time?”
There was a hint of exasperation but it didn’t phase you, “Is this really you?” You were inquisitive as you neared him, eying him from top to bottom. His typical black suit always made him look refined and now his hair was a bit longer, kept tucked behind his pierced ears. “Or is this something you show to me? Like a mask?”
You stopped in front of him and he chuckled, “Does it bother you?”
“Fuck no,” you scoffed. What kind of question was that? “It pleases me a lot. Hence, why I’d like it to be real.”
“This is the real me. I can change it but,” he shrugged and you raised your hands to cup his cheeks.
“Don’t change it, I fucking adore it.”
You pressed your lips to his and thought nothing of the way he took a second to kiss you back. It had happened before and you were just too eager to think twice. Just seeing him awakened you, talking sparked your interest, and brushing your lips together shot you up into the clouds. His taste inebriated you and the more his tongue pressed the exchange, the more the desire lit up inside you.
You buried your fingers in his hair and he reciprocated, pressing you close until your feet stopped touching the ground. He carried you back toward the bed and you sighed into his kiss — validated a hundred times over.
So when your calves touched the bed, you broke the kiss and gave him one look before switching places with him. You fell to your knees and searched for the black trousers’ zipper and bit your lip when you found it. Despite previous failed attempts at taking charge, you were pleased that he was letting you get on with it, feeding that flame within you.
You could have made it hot and slow by undressing him, pumping him softly until you closed your grip, licking softly around his sensitive balls, and maybe even nibbling on his thighs before flicking your tongue up his shaft and suckling on the tip. But you couldn’t be bothered to play it slowly when you had nearly obsessed about what he would taste like without your cum’s interference. He liked to give you that particular taste, like a last high before you fell asleep, but you had wondered how it would be if it was just him. And now you were about to find out.
You were happily getting his hard dick out and watering at the sight with your tongue sticking out when a strong grip by your hair roots stilled you in place. You looked up, batting your eyelashes innocently and quizically only to notice a hint of annoyance pulling his lip. You didn’t wonder if he wanted to stop — you knew he liked being with you and enjoyed your times together. Whatever it was, it was preventing you both from finding enjoyment in each other and you didn’t want that.
You gave him a nod and a smile, hoping he could read in your eyes how much you wanted this. You didn’t want to just fuck this time around. It wasn’t even just about learning his taste, it was so much more than that.
He released the grip on your hair and you knew that he was, as always, letting you do what you wanted. It was frankly refreshing. You set your eyes on his furiously red cock pointing at your face and nodded to yourself. For all the demon talk and lore you found online, one of the things that seemed real was that he was always honest with you. He never forced you into things, if anything he even pushed you to do better and have better. It just made you burn inside and want to give him everything even more.
And today that meant pressing your lips to the tip of his cock right before you let the hot plush skin part your mouth into an o. You knew, as you lowered your head, that you’d never take him fully. You didn’t even think you could get too much in without choking too soon because of how thick he was. But none of that was an issue for quite a few reasons: you were going to enjoy yourself and do whatever you liked, you’d look and feel hot doing it, you’d make him feel good partially just on those simple truths, and finally, he could always just use you.
You moaned with his cock sliding inside your mouth at the pace of your choosing and his grip around your hair tightened. Your tongue lapped at his tip, searching for his taste and having no qualms about getting it out of him with a bit of pressure. Your hallowed cheeks created a vacuum for just a second, yet he groaned and you tried again. His taste hit you with the force of a thousand flavors and your mouth slacked. You moaned deeply, your mind floored and overwhelmed with the sweet richness searing into your taste buds, and you drooled. Your spit was flowing down his shaft, dripping down his balls in a testament to how far gone you were. Until his nails sank into your scalp and he groaned.
That was when you tauted your lips again and decided that if his precum was a nectar, then his cum would be like an elixir from the gods and you had to have it. You cupped and caressed his balls as you got accustomed to his girth stretching your lips, tentatively sliding up and down to see how he’d react. 
You were clenching around nothing, lewdly drooling and moaning over his cock as if you had reached an oasis, but his groans got to you. They sent shivers down your spine and puckered your skin down your nape as he gripped your hair tighter without ever forcing your head. It made you only want to work harder and as you got ready with a deep breath, instantly the musky scent added to the sweetness in your mouth. It lit up your brain like a Christmas tree, twinkling with every drop of precum dissolving on your tongue, and you whimpered.
After that, things became messy. Your hands favored his round asscheeks to press him closer as you sought to have as much of him as possible. You pressed him in so hard, trying to swallow him whole, but that just wouldn’t be possible. Even then, you angled your head better, slid lower, and took him deeper, again and again with masterful control of your breath and his thrusts.
At first, you wanted to please him, but the more the idea of him using you resurged, the more you found yourself hoping he’d grip you and fuck your throat numb. You had no idea where all that unrestrained hunger came from but you weren’t sure you had ever been like that with anyone else. With him, your emotions were raw while he reached within you deeply, poking a nerve that you didn’t think anyone had access to. You craved his unrestrained care and attention, even if it bled, because at least he would come back for you. He’d hold you to sleep and come back every time.
You looked up with watering eyes to find him looking at you. His gaze was intense, completely focused on you with his lips slightly parted. A thin shin of sweat was making his forehead and neck glisten and it tightened you up even more. You wanted that m— that demon, or whatever he was. You didn’t care if you’d burn in hell for it — it was worth it to feel alive and real.
You whimpered and pressed him into your face harder and wished with your whole soul that he knew what you wanted. His nails grazing your skin made you look up and you blinked at him almost pleadingly. A low growl passed through his gritted teeth and a moment later you saw white.
You knew pain didn’t work for you the same way as it did for others, especially when sex was involved. You also knew because of him that lack of oxygen was a powerful catalyst for you and that most importantly, you were safe with him. You could have wondered why but it never occurred to you, the same way there was no point in questioning why water is wet and the sunlight is yellow. All you knew was that you were safe to feel the sting, the roughness, his scent mixed with the sweat and sheer sex aroma all around you, the sweetness of his precum mixed with the salt of your tears, everything in a whirlwind that swept you off your feet, beyond getting you to your knees. And when he finally came, it propelled you into bliss.
You moaned around him, trying to swallow every drop of his release as though you were a woman starved for a week. The more you quaffed, the more you craved, drinking until you almost choked. He pulled you back by the hair to release his cock and beyond his cum trickling down your chin, you realized you were moaning. Your mind was lit up like a billboard sign and it took you a beat to recognize that you were spasming around nothing, worn out on both ends from his release and yours.
You were taking deep breaths to rebalance yourself when they somehow became shaky. He pulled you up by the hands and you did as instructed, unable to control the trembles and sobs now shaking you.
He observed you, sliding his hands on the sides of your neck under your long strands of hair only to grab you there and press his fingers into your skin. It felt surprisingly soothing and tears started flowing from your eyes. You could only stare at him, without a thought that could justify this until he leaned in to kiss you. Then your breath hiccuped and you squeezed your eyes shut, letting the tears fall with that deep emotion. He could probably taste himself in your mouth, his cum was still on your chin, and yet he licked your lips and pushed inside your mouth without reservations. His lack of hesitation shook you and had you reaching to grab him close. You felt as though you were a ball of wool of which he had finally found the loose thread, only to pull it and watch it unravel. 
You didn’t stop crying, however, despite not realizing exactly why. You were ready to clean your face and step away, but as soon as your mouths parted, he was already sweeping you off your feet. You were in no condition to complain so all you did was hold on to his neck and let him carry you.
He had been there so many times but never to your ensuite bathroom. Still, he acted like he had been there a thousand times. He started the water to fill your bathtub with one hand before setting your feet down on the floor. He gently took your silk pajamas off as the water slowly pooled in your big tub. You watched him and let him, seeing him brush the strips down your arms and pull your shorts along with it. Your nudity didn’t bother you or him as he made sure to put everything away before he grabbed you once more and gently laid you inside the rising bath.
You didn’t let go of his hand, your heart was scared of him abandoning you. Instantly, you recognized that maybe that wasn’t the best course of action, but he surprised you. He crouched to your eye level and squeezed your hand, and you settled. You trusted him — that was the absolute truth.
You leaned back and let the warm water envelop you as he reached to grab oils and petals from the nearby counter. Your eyes were becoming heavy with the lull of the perfumes and dripping water, and when you opened them again, he was getting naked. Despite your lethargy, your heart still jumped at the sight and the implication. He did it slowly, or maybe your mind was just sluggish. You wondered why he didn’t just snap his fingers to get naked, but then you almost chuckled at the silliness of your thoughts.
The bathtub was big and could even fit three people if needed. You didn’t mind sharing it and didn’t expect what he did next — he reached around you and hugged you to him. Your last sob exited your lips then, only soothing deep breaths following suit. You were safe and you finally drifted asleep.
You inhaled a sharp breath when you woke up, startled to be immersed in water only to look up to your side with a dropped chin. He was still there, his arms keeping you firmly in place against his soft chest under your ear. He glanced at you, with your glistening sleepy eyes and puffy cheeks.
Then he raised a hand and rubbed your chin.
You blushed, still dazed not only by your nap, but by the whole situation. Was he wiping drool off your chin?
“You never told me what it was that you needed.”
His voice rasped quietly, yet your heart picked it up as if he had screamed it atop his lungs. It shook you unbearably, adding to your flushing cheeks that you pressed hastily. Water splashed lightly on your heated face and you swallowed. You never told him because… there was nothing you wanted. You only wanted to see him and be with him.
Shit.
You couldn’t possibly tell him that.
“I… wanted… a new phone,” you said slowly before chuckling and rubbing your face a bit more.
“A phone?”
His tone was dry but you were too busy making up something to notice, “Yeah, Apple has this new upcoming—”
He got up from the water, the sudden splashing cutting you off as you watched him go. The corners of your lips pulled; you couldn’t hide the sadness — you hadn’t even enjoyed that moment properly.
He gripped his hair for a second before facing you, “Why can’t you see further than this junk?”
You frowned, a bit confused, “What junk?”
“All of it,” he almost hissed, disgust clear on his features. “A jet, a building, money— I get it. You need comfort, sure, but a phone? Fuck! Why are you wasting your life away on junk?”
As he talked, you sat up straight until your lips pulled in a scowl, “Waste? Yeah, right.”
You got up, ignoring the dizziness, and stepped out carefully to reach for a towel. His eyes were so intense they could have been marking you like a branding iron.
You couldn’t have imagined how furious you were making him, “Yes, waste! You have time. Don’t you want to do something with it?”
You wrapped yourself in a towel and laughed, “Not all of us are meant to amount to something.”
He snickered, “Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, not all of you have everything money can buy, safety, and health,” he pointed out gravely and you raised your chin. 
“It doesn't matter.”
“No?” He sneered.
“No,” you said, dryly and confidently. “When you’re proud of nothing, attached to nothing, and have no meaning… you lose purpose.”
His expression softened for the first time and you looked away. You were not afraid to tell him what you felt deep down, but you were conscious about him seeing your demons. By the look on his face, you wondered if he had all along.
“You have things you’re passionate about,” he voiced simply, all anger gone.
Your mouth filled with bile, “No. I tried,” you admitted bitterly, crossing your arms over your chest. “It was maybe the only thing I tried doing for myself aside from summoning you. My parents didn’t approve. A music career is not exactly at the level of an Ivy League degree,” you smirked, shaking your head at the memory of that fight. “I thought I could prove them wrong. I thought I could become a big shot, with or without their support. I couldn't.”
You stopped talking; a huge lump in your throat was filling your eyes with tears. The memories you would like to forget were resurfacing and you hugged yourself. You could have asked for him to take them away… but you didn’t.
“They hurt you.”
You looked at him and your eyes filled to the brim. Yet you chuckled, “Isn’t that what everyone does? Use and abuse?” You rubbed your face harshly before you could break, “Isn’t that what you experienced as well?”
“Yes, but that was not what ruined me.”
You overlooked the surprise at the fact that he answered you and that you were even having this conversation. “What was?”
“Drugs and alcohol.”
You chuckled and nodded; those had been your escape and they certainly made you pliable, stupid, and vulnerable.
“But you… You’ve given up before trying.”
His voice was the gentlest you had ever heard from him but you still frowned, “I tried.” 
Your anguish was threatening to asphyxiate you, but he added, “And gave up.”
You grimaced, you couldn’t breathe, “You have no idea—”
A sob cut you off and you trembled with the unspoken agitation repressed deep inside you.
He nodded, “I know. I know it broke you, but don’t let it. You’re not defined by how a few assholes treated you in the past. You’re more than other’s opinions, more than a period you’re not proud of, more than any addiction.”
You gritted your teeth so hard as he spoke that they clicked, “How would you know that?”
“You sold your soul to me,” he said calmly, eyeing your trembling figure knowingly. “What do you think I bought?”
You quivered under his gaze and wiped your cheek off the runaway tears. Beyond the turmoil that topic created inside you, you were aware of what he was saying. Aware that he knew you inside and out, that he would own you, and that he wouldn’t have this conversation if he didn’t see more for you. But you couldn’t have hope, you couldn’t believe it. It would shatter you if you did and you weren’t ready — you had just found such a precarious balance. You couldn’t unravel and let it all go to waste.
“If not a phone, then I have another request,” your voice cracked but in a second your eyes were void of emotion as your features stiffened. You couldn’t grasp how far he could see inside you, or how much he knew you, but as he straightened his shoulders, you assumed it was a lot. He knew of your nightmares extensively, so when the thought came to your mind, he knew you meant it. His cold eyes told you he knew what it was before you opened your mouth, “I want my parents to suffer.”
As soon as you said it, anger shook your balling fists. You let yourself blame them, hate them for your circumstances, for your story, for your pain. You never asked to be born. Was it so hard to support their only daughter in this hell of a world? If they had been there—
“Destroy their estate.” You said with a stiff jaw, remembering the number of times they had chosen work over you. Every time you had gone to them to be dismissed, every time you tried voicing a dream and were laughed at, and every time after that they just let you do shit freely. “It’s time they lose the only thing they care about.”
“They care about you.”
“They threw me away,” you countered with venomous eyes.
“Maybe they didn’t expect you to summon a demon and have all of your problems swept away…” he leaned back against the sink; his air of nonchalance didn’t soothe you one bit.
You were already triggered, “They didn’t expect it?” A sardonic laugh passed your lips, “Sure, I guess they didn’t. So isn’t it weird they didn’t contact me all this time?”
“Maybe they don’t know how to.”
“They just have to fucking google my name!” You exploded, throwing your fists in the air. “They don’t do it because they don’t care!”
“Or maybe because you wouldn’t welcome them.”
Your fists fell numb beside your legs and you eyed him with bloodshot eyes. He was a demon; maybe this was part of the torture. “I wouldn’t, but it shouldn’t matter. You think they should only reach out on the premise they can be white knights and save my pathetic life? No. Caring about someone is—” Your voice shook, realizing what you were about to say to the very demon that taught you that. He waited for you to finish speaking your mind. “Letting them live on their own terms. Helping them go through it, maybe preventing them from making some shitty decisions, but sticking by them regardless because—”
Tears streamed down your face and you had to turn around. You couldn’t say those things to his face, you were afraid he’d see through you. See who you were thinking about.
You sniffled and wiped your face before turning again, “They should care. Whether I’m fucked, alive or dead, they should fucking care and they don’t.”
He took a second to consider what you said, or maybe he was just giving you time to calm down. “Caring isn’t only shown by reaching out. People make mistakes in trying to demonstrate their feelings, especially when they’re hurt and desperate.”
His dark eyes were piercing you to your soul and your tears overflowed again. You smirked for a moment before hiding your face to clean them again. This bastard was not going to make it any easier for you.
“They had my whole life to show they cared. Instead, they left me alone.”
“Why were you alone?”
You blinked your heavy and wet lashes with the memory of being shooed away. Your mother was lying on a bed with lines attached to her and with people in white coats all around her.
“My mom was sick for a long time,” you remembered. “She… she couldn’t have more children.”
You looked down; your stupidity echoed behind your eyelids.
Maybe you should have had more kids.
You heaved a deep breath and rubbed your eyes. What a dick you were. It didn’t matter that you were high, you were such an asshole. They had been bastards too for staying absent your whole life, and you guessed the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Maybe more kids would have meant you wouldn't be the only one screwed up. You chuckled, that might have been better.
You looked up at him and wondered if things could have been different. If you had summoned him earlier, you could have wished for your mother to be healthy. Maybe that would have changed everything.
His impenetrable eyes didn’t blink once while you considered all this, and you looked down again. You wouldn’t have ever been at a crossroads selling your soul if things hadn’t gotten so shitty. There was nothing you could do about that now.
“Not their entire estate. Just— A branch of the family business.”
“It will cost you.”
You nodded, “It should.”
He sighed, “I’ll see what I can do.”
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omg-im-such-a-masochist · 1 year ago
Text
𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚌𝚔𝚘𝚕𝚖 - 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝟸
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Warnings: +18, adult content, semi-erotic content, harsh language, dub-con, mild psychological torture, yandere vibes, slow burn.
Tags: @theworldofotps , @writtingrose , @aerynscrichton, @daddyhausen , @melissahausen , @unoficialy-married-to-ace-austin , @sophiewolfheart-blog , @sultryfandoms , @new-zealand-chic, @crowleysqueenofhell , @thealliasylum , @legit9thlunaticwarrior , @adamjf , @josiewrites , @seeingstarks , @irish-newzealand-idian-dutch, @whenimakeitshine1234, @moxkindagirl , @sunshinevirus , @im-just-a-mississippi-girl , @ripleyswhore
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Chapter 1
“But first” Claudio squeezed the flesh of her hip, making sure to apply enough pressure to make her feel his trimmed nails sinking into her skin. 
It was a silent warning, she could feel the harshness of every word underneath his deadly grip. She would have to be careful with this one, he wasn’t completely under her spell as Mox was. And even though Yuta was dangerous, he was a minor one compared to the bald man. 
She could see it in his eyes, as Claudio slowly released her flesh, that he wouldn’t think twice before hurting her. 
And if she’d like to have any sort of advantage over these men, she would have to get at least two of them on her side. 
“Let’s have our snack before it gets cold” Claudio grinned, his dark eyes sparkled with knowledge and a fake warmness that was meant to give her a false sense of security. 
She knew that look all too well, being familiar with it ever since she was a child, she could sense it from a mile away. This one was smarter than Yuta and Mox together.
This one was going to be responsible for putting her acting skills to the test. 
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Claudio had brought them two grilled cheese sandwiches, a cup of coffee for himself, a cup of orange juice for her, and a small bowl of chopped fruits. Strawberries, kiwis, red and green grapes were the ones she could spot on the top of the porcelain bowl. 
She slightly frowned, these were not only all of her favorite fruits but it was also intriguing to her how they had managed to find kiwi in her town. 
The fruit is typically grown in temperate climates with mild winters and warm summers, and that was the exact opposite climate of her town. 
All of the times she craved to eat the exquisite fruit, she had to drive at least 3 hours to the closest state with a temperate climate so she could find the sweet yet tangy-tasting fruit at the grocery store. 
This was odd, to say the least. It was either an indication that they were distant from her town or that the men who kidnapped her came from somewhere far from where she lived. 
“Do you like kiwis?” Claudio asks, suddenly curious about her apparent fixation over the fruit. 
“Yes,” She nodded, momentarily licking her lips in order to try to fake a nervousness. “It’s one of my favorites…I haven’t eaten it in a long time”
“Well, ain’t today your lucky day?” The smile on Claudio’s lips was spine-chilling, like an owl’s hoot on a winter night. A bad omen for what was yet to come. 
Her eyes found the deer’s head on the wall once again, it whispered softly to her, humming a familiar tune over and over like a broken record. 
She felt it before she could see it, the sweetness followed by the tanginess and slightly acidic taste of the fruit against her lips, her eyes darted down to Claudio’s fingers, which held the piece of fruit against her bottom lip. 
The once-friendly flavor now tasted hostile, aggressive, malicious, and venomous. The man before her had poisoned it with his touch, and nausea began to rise up her throat. 
Staring at the Swiss man who was now face to face with her, she watched as his tongue darted out to collect the juices of the green fruit spread across her lips. She felt it, the warm and rough texture of the muscle tasting her skin. And before she could rationalize what had happened, the man whispered “Lay down”.
Her eyes fixated on his as he spoke:
“I’m going to ask you some questions, and for each correct answer I’ll reward you with some of your favorite fruits” Claudio smiled widely “Let’s begin”. 
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The winter wind blew against her wet skin, prickling and burning her delicate flesh. Uncontrolled shivers run through her entire body, a sharp pain constricts her lungs and pressure begins to install itself in her chest, making her already shallow breath become weaker with each drag of breath in.
Her eyes tingled with the unshed tears and her throat burned with the desire to scream through the howling wind.
“I can see your tears from here, dytyna. You’re not fooling anyone” Mykola laughs, pulling a long drag of his cigarette as she screamed at the top of her lungs “FUCK YOU!”. 
The temper tantrum only served to make her father’s right-hand laugh louder, his combat boots sank into the snow as he squatted down, “Are you feeling better now? Good, now control your emotions from now on. You’re a smart kid, but you let your mind take over and that’s a terrible mistake. The last thing you want is to be your own enemy, got it?”.
She nodded weakly before Mykola snarled “I asked if you got it”
“Dobre, ya zrozumiv.” She answers, shaking violently as another harsh gust of wind hits her wet skin.
The Ukrainian man tossed the cigarette bud on the snow before helping her stand up from the floor, “Let’s get inside, we’re done for today”. Placing a thick blanket around her body, Mykola opened the back door of the warehouse and pushed her inside with him. A fluffy navy blue towel covered her head as he carefully dried her hair, “Can we go near the fire?” She asked with trembling limbs.
“No” Mykola softly pushed her down to sit on the old armchair, “You’re hypothermic, if we do that you’ll die. We need to warm up your body slowly, we’ll stay here for now, and as time goes by we’ll move closer to the fire”.
Mykola “Myko” Kolavenko was her father’s right-hand and her bodyguard ever since she was a child, he was the closest she’d ever get to a fatherly figure, and most of the time even being referred to as so by her. When she was 4 years old, Myko wanted to introduce her to martial arts as a way of discipline and self-defense, but her father completely forbade “Men are supposed to defend and fight, not women! I don’t want her to become a tomboy, Myko. She will fit the role God created her for, which is a woman who will be a wife, a mother, a nurturing figure” Was her father’s first and last statement about the subject.
After finding her in the kitchen crying over her father’s response, Myko sat beside her on the table, dried her tears, and whispered “Your father didn’t let us train your body, but he didn’t say we can’t train your mind”.
“What do you mean?” She looked up at him, hope written all over her innocent eyes.
“Means you’ll be able to beat me at poker” Myko winked, which made her giggle.
The memory made her smile and from the armchair, her eyes now settled on his wrinkled face. “Do you think I’m able to beat you at poker now?” She joked, teeth chattering as Myko placed another heavy blanket around her body.
The man chuckled, pulling an old chair in front of her so they could seat face to face, “Absolutely fucking not. At least not yet, you still have a long way to go before I even allow you near a poker table”.
“Why?” She frowned
“Because I don’t want to lose money” Myko winks with a smirk. He grabs a whisky glass and fills it to the brim with the amber liquid.
“Do you think I’ll ever be able to do it, Myko? To control my mind, I mean. Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck like it’s all for nothing. I don’t think I’m having any progress at all, and it’s fucking frustrating”.
Myko took a big gulp of the whisky and let the all too familiar burning feeling settle in his throat. “Training the body is easier than training the mind. After a few years of training you kill the receptive nerves of pain in your body and well, you become basically painless. Meaning it doesn’t distract you anymore, someone can punch you in the face and it won’t shock you or disorient you. Now the mind is way more problematic because it’s in constant change, as you grow older your mind and perception change and you have to adapt to a completely different reality. Compare yourself from 6 months ago to now, you’ve changed so much in here” Myko tapped her left temple, “And it will happen again 6 months from now, so you have to be able to adapt to everything, dytyna, because you never know what’s going to happen. The reason why I put you outside on a winter night in Kyiv and wetted your skin is to start to accustom your mind to be in uncomfortable and under pressure sceneries because that’s when your whole system becomes alert. Emotions appear all at once, your mind races due to stress, pain, and despair, and you either shut down or do something really stupid that will have catastrophic consequences so you have to learn how to act during times like this.
“You will register your feelings, your thoughts of despair and agony, but they won’t be what drive and guide you anymore because you’ll control them not the other way around. That’s the most valuable lesson you have yet to learn, divchynka. Control your mind before it controls you because if that happens, you’re doomed. Completely fucked”.
Myko grabbed another glass of whisky and filled it with the equivalent of two shot glasses, he handed the glass to her and she frowned in confusion. “It’ll be our secret” He winked as she took the cup in her hand.
“Here’s to not being completely fucked” Myko clicked their glasses together before smiling fondly “Happy 16th birthday”.
“Thank you” She smiled back, a hint of sadness hid behind her soft smile, “And thank you for not letting me spend today alone…it means a lot”.
“You can always count on me, dytyna. Even when I’m not there”.
And as the warm tears rolled down her cheeks, she felt Myko’s arms pulling her closer to a tight embrace.
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Would Myko be proud of her? Not only of the adult woman she became but mostly of her approach to what was currently happening? Would he be proud of her Machiavelli-like persuasion, of her theatrical skills, and what about her ability to be cohesive? If he could see her now would he applaud her choices or curse her through her less appealing tactics?
“Everyone can lie, dytyna. But a valley is what separates a liar from a good liar. And a bridge is what separates a good liar from a magnificent liar. And that’s who you’re aiming to be: a magnificent liar. To a point where no one, not even me, can tell apart a truth from a lie”.
And that she had successfully achieved, if there was one thing she had learned from Myko from a very young age was to be a terrific liar.
That is her advantage over the Swiss man before her, he can have the wits and the strength, but she has the biggest advantage of all time: she knows how to lie.
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oldiesstationlover11607 · 4 months ago
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Can you just be an adult about this for once?
Relationship: Tyler Joseph x Fem!Reader
Warnings: small fight/misunderstanding but mainly fluff
Description: reader thinks tyler's leaving her at home during the clancy tour which causes a massive misunderstanding.
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Tour was three days away, and Tyler still hadn’t asked me to go with him. We’d been dating for a year, together for the whole album process. Lore research? Done in bed with me. Writing and recording? Done in our basement studio. Album release stream? I was in it. Twice. I had been looking forward to The Clancy Tour since Tyler knew it was greenlit. Even Mark had been talking to me about all the tech and graphics, clearly wanting my opinion as someone with a film degree. But still, no mention of me coming along.
I got up and made breakfast for Tyler, knowing he was heading into another long day of rehearsals with Josh.
“Hmm, thanks, Y/N,” he said, grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down at the bar. Josh had called me earlier in the week, wanting to know if I was coming. Debby always went on tour. I remember, before Tyler and I got together, I would look at her Instagram stories for behind-the-scenes pictures and videos. Josh knew Tyler hadn’t mentioned it yet; there was no way he didn’t know.
“Tyler?” I almost never called him that. It was Ty or Honey or some other cute nickname I’d come up with on the spot. He paused, eyes darting up to mine. I tried to figure out what to say next without causing an issue; he was already stressed about having the perfect show for the clique.
“What?” he asked, genuinely clueless about what was wrong. I looked down and started picking at my fingers, trying to find a decent way to ask him about the tour. “Y/N?”
“It’s nothing, Ty.” Of course, I couldn’t say anything to him. It wasn’t going to come out.
“Well, clearly it’s something.” He raised his eyebrows and folded his arms across his chest. I’d started something I didn’t want to finish.
“Are you going to hate me if I’m honest?” I asked, pulling at the sides of my nails. Tyler reached out to grab my hands, stopping me. My palms were sweaty; I knew they were.
“You need to relax and calmly tell me what’s bothering you, okay?” He held eye contact until I nodded silently. I took a deep breath, trying to reset my mind. “You’re really upset, aren’t you?”
“Well, wouldn’t you be if the love of your life was about to leave you for, like, three months?” I snapped, immediately regretting what I’d said. Tyler’s jaw dropped. I could tell he was trying to figure out how to respond. A slow smile crept onto his face. He thought this was funny. “Can you just be an adult about this for once? Everyone keeps asking me if I’m going on tour, and I have to keep telling them no. It’s embarrassing, Tyler. Not to mention that we haven’t spent a night apart in a year, and I’m already missing you.” He stood up and walked around the bar, standing directly in front of me.
“I love you.” The smile was still planted freshly on his face.
“This isn’t funny,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“No, I know. It’s just… you scare me when you act like that. Like I’ve done something terribly wrong and ended up ruining our relationship. But then it turns out you’re just gonna miss me,” he pouted, dragging out the last few words. “I was going to surprise you. You’re coming with me; I just wanted it to be special, you know.” Then I felt bad. I’d really messed up.
“Oh god, I’m sorry. I just felt weird and was gonna miss you and–” I was interrupted by his hands cupping my face gently. He leaned forward, and his smile turned into a smirk. I could feel warmth rush to my cheeks as I tried to keep my cool. A year-long relationship, and I still wasn’t used to the things he did.
“Y/N, we have three months living in a bus together. Trust me when I say that we’ll be spending so much time together that you’re not gonna miss me,” he chuckled, and I nodded quietly. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
//
Please submit any requests y'all have! I love to write so let me know if you've got any!
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daisiesonafield-blog · 2 years ago
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Louis Tomlinson is sequestered in the executive boardroom of a swanky hotel in suburban London, and is treating it the way a pupil might a classroom when the teacher’s popped out. He’s leaning back on his chair, feet up on a radiator, hands clasped behind his head and a cigarette on the go. “All right?” he says, grinning impishly.
Despite huge global success with One Direction (70 million albums sold), which prompted a fanaticism that made Beatlemania look tame, he seems remarkably unaffected and far more normal than one might expect from someone with 35.8 million Twitter followers. He’s a 31-year-old so unassumingly bloke-next-door that the bloke next door wouldn’t look twice.
“I’ve always had a problem with ‘ego’,” he says, “and I’ve always been worried about being one of those people in the public eye who just loses all sense of reality, and becomes an arsehole.” As if by way of explanation, he adds: “I’m from Doncaster.”
And so while his former 1D bandmate Harry Styles, a superstar, floats through life like the fashion world’s favourite clothes horse, Tomlinson kits himself out in JD Sports: Kappa T-shirt, black sweatpants, Adidas socks, scuffed trainers. When he tells you he often frequents his local pub unmolested, you believe him.
“If someone does come up after an hour to ask for a selfie, I won’t say no and I won’t run away,” he says, “’specially if I’m three pints deep!”
Of the five members of 1D, Tomlinson has had the slowest start to a solo career. There are compelling reasons for this — family tragedy for one — but he’s also had to figure out who he is without the band around him. “With this job,” he says, “there’s so much room for overthinking, you know? Someone from the record label will tell you they like your stuff, but you find yourself thinking: yeah, but do they? It’s the fans that help you really believe in yourself.”
In the band, Zayn Malik had the best voice and Styles had the best everything else. While the other three — Tomlinson, Liam Payne and Niall Horan — were hardly driftwood, each has nevertheless had to dig deep to carve out a solo persona that would compel beyond the bubble.
“I do miss the boys,” he says, “and I do definitely miss being one of the five, but I like doing my own thing too. It was time.”
It’s a bright winter’s day, and the man in sports casual is enjoying special dispensation here in the hotel: permission to light up. Had this been denied, there might well have been a problem, for Tomlinson chain-smokes with the wild abandon of Mad Men’s Don Draper.
After the release of his second solo album, Faith in the Future, in November, he adds another necessary notch in the belt of any self-respecting pop star next month: the documentary. All of Those Voices is a routine behind-the-scenes look at 21st-century celebrity but stands out for the multiple crises of confidence Tomlinson feels any time he’s not on stage.
“This is a confidence game for anyone,” he says earnestly, “and there’s been plenty of moments of vulnerability throughout the entire process.” An overriding concern of the documentary is not just whether people would be interested in him, but whether they’d take him, someone discovered on a TV talent show, seriously.
When Styles won his Grammy awards this month — he collected two and won four Brits — he used his acceptance speech to say that “this doesn’t happen to people like me very often”. This was swiftly ridiculed across social media because of course white men tend to win quite a lot. But what he likely meant was that it doesn’t happen to the product of manufactured boy bands, many of whom have the use-by date of a pint of milk.
“Only Harry knows what he means there, it’s hard to speculate,” Tomlinson says, “but we all came from relatively humble beginnings, and now we are where we are.”
But while Styles is a once-in-a-generation talent and knows it, his erstwhile bandmates — and this one in particular — need convincing.
Louis Tomlinson comes from a big family — his mother, Johannah Deakin, married twice and had seven children — and was a hopeful child actor before in 2010 auditioning for The X Factor. This is where 1D were created, “masterminded” by Louis Walsh. Deakin, who had Tomlinson when she was 19, was his biggest fan and they’d always been close. When, for example, Tomlinson lost his virginity, it was she he told first, not his friends.
In 2016, a year after One Direction split, she died from leukaemia, aged 42. Two years later, his 18-year-old sister, Félicité, who’d been struggling to get over her mother’s death, accidentally overdosed on cocaine, painkillers and an anxiety drug. The combined loss hit him hard. Aside from the single he wrote about his mother’s passing, 2020’s Two of Us, his mourning has been largely private.
He squints through a veil of cigarette smoke. “Some of the things that have happened recently have been quite drastic, yeah, but then so much in my life seems to have been pretty extreme, one way or the other.” In 2016, at the age of 25, a brief relationship with a Californian stylist, Briana Jungwirth, resulted in a son. “There’ve been challenging times, definitely. It’s funny, but I couldn’t even tell you how many years ago my mum passed, I just blank it out. But for the first 18 months, I’d take any form of bad luck personally. I’d feel every tiny thing. But now I genuinely feel I’ve come out the other side. I feel more empathy for everything and everyone these days.”
After his 2020 debut album, Walls, failed to set the world alight, Tomlinson called time on his relationship with Simon Cowell. “It was mostly amicable,” he says, nodding. “Simon always had my best interests at heart, and I liked him. He had his faults of course, like all of us, but it was always inevitable I’d have to go off and do my own thing.”
His new record, then, was a leap into the unknown and he elected to write not with professional songwriters but rather fellow creative artists: Theo Hutchcraft from the band Hurts, Joe Cross from the Courteeners and the singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow. “And that was a big difference, huge. These are people who live and breathe music. It’s the first time I felt really comfortable doing my own stuff, you know?”
Previously he’d been encouraged to sing like a nice young pop star should, without regional inflection. “When I was in the band,” he says, “working with professional songwriters whose entire aim was to write the hit single, they’d tell me that singing in my natural accent wasn’t commercial. Sorry, but what a shit idea! Who wants to sound like everybody else? I dumbed down a little bit in the band, because you do, but I’ve learnt who I am now.”
The album, which has its inspiration firmly in early Noughties indie, sounds more Kaiser Chiefs than One Direction. A risk, then. But when it came out, it debuted at No 1. While this did wonders for his confidence, it’s clear from the documentary that he still needs people — a support group — around him. He actively courts the friendship of his touring band, not necessarily a given among solo pop stars, and he seems almost always sociable. It’s when he’s not up for group activity that people worry. There’s a revealing moment in the documentary of him having just appeared on James Corden’s US talk show. Backstage Corden, an old friend, pleads with him not to go quiet on him afterwards. “You vanish, you change your number, no one knows [where you are],” he says.
Until recently Tomlinson lived in London with his long-term girlfriend, the model Eleanor Calder, but recent reports suggest they’ve split up and he’s dating another model, Sofie Nyvang. Life, clearly, is complicated. Perhaps that’s why he smokes so much. He says, though, that he feels finally relieved of the myriad pressures that once clung to being a pop star whose fanbase was predominantly teenage. Such as?
“Well, being a role model for one. I never wanted that. I always had to worry whether it was OK if, say, I was seen here or if I could get away with smoking a joint there, before concluding: hmm, probably not. But I never wanted to be the perfect pop star, especially in the climate of Instagram. I don’t want to put an artificial world out there. I think it’s important that people see your scars, your flaws.”
It’s never easy growing up in public and Tomlinson had no choice. “When One Direction split up,” he says, “I was mortified, I was absolutely gutted. I was a bit bitter, I suppose because it just felt like another loss to me. But I’ve a better understanding of things now, and there’s not as much anger. It is what it is.
“Getting back together at some point is hard to imagine right now,” he continues, “but I’d be surprised if we lived out our lives and didn’t have a moment where we had a reunion, or whatever you want to call it. I’d be up for that.”
When I ask what it’s like watching Styles’s ascendance into the biggest star of his generation — something that might delay such a reunion — he blows out a long plume of smoke.
“Well, it’s not a surprise is it? We were always aware that Harry fit that mould, and it’s been an amazing thing to watch. Envy? At the start maybe, when I was trying to find my feet, but it’s never healthy to cross-reference your own success with others is it? These days I’m learning to elevate myself in those moments when I have to. I didn’t know how to do that before, but now? Now I know I f***ing can.” All of Those Voices is in cinemas from March 22,  allofthosevoices.com
-Full article. Feb 23 2023. Link here. Free link here.
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tcwmatchmakingau · 1 year ago
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The Blacklist
Summary: The coldest commander in the GAR meets a different kind of match when he makes an unscheduled visit to Daria’s office.
Commander Neyo vs. ofc: Daria Trace, featuring @littlemissmanga ofc: Yen (hope I got her lines just right🥰)
Rating: T
Word count: 1080
“I think I’d live here, if I wouldn’t drink enough caf to power an ion cannon,” Daria mused, as the barista passed cups of iced caf to her and Yen. She thanked the young woman and dropped credits in the tip jar before the pair headed to their favorite bench to people watch.
“You already do that. Besides when are you ever home?” Yen asked with a raised brow.
Daria was saved from answering when her comm beeped.
“Trace,” she answered smoothly.
“Daria,” Blizzard said nervously once the matchmaker answered her comm.
“Hi, Blizzard…is everything alright?” Daria asked, looking up at Yen with a puzzled expression.
“No, not at all. Commander Neyo is here again.”
Daria released a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of her weary soul.
“Let me guess, the woman I set him up with doesn’t follow orders?” She asked, taking a sip of her drink.
Yen’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. Neyo was their most difficult client. He’d been on more dates than anyone, and despite Daria’s preternatural ability to put the right people together, she remained unsuccessful with the commander.
“He didn’t say. He barged in, and now he’s camping out in your office. Please come back. He’s so scary,” Blizzard whispered despite the fact that his desk was nowhere near Daria’s office where the commander waited for her.
“I’m on my way, love. If he gets fussy with you, just call Fox or Thorn,” she instructed.
“I’m going to call them now, so they’re in the area at least,” he replied.
“Ok, I’ll be there soon.”
As she ended the call, she looked up at Yen. The exhaustion and irritation evident in the set of her lips, and the quirk of her eyebrow.
“How many dates has it been?” Yen asked, eyes narrowed as she thought of how many times Neyo had been to the office to monopolize Daria’s time.
“To quote our darling, Blizz, ‘too kriffing many’,” Daria said, shaking her head.
“You’re going to have to swallow your pride on this one.”
“He’s going to ruin my track record.”
“That’s better than his unscheduled visits surely,” Yen offered, as the two of them took off for the office.
“I guess it is, I just,” Daria began before she remembered how much of a migraine Neyo had been.
She hadn’t even understood his presence in her office when he’d come in to build his profile. Unlike his brothers, Neyo seemed to just want a soldier that wasn’t related to him. Unfortunately, that meant his only viable matches were strong-willed people, that didn’t care about his rank or his authority. He’d barged into her office to complain about the ‘battalion of brats’ she’d set him up with, and demanded she find someone respectful.
Daria had leveled him with a look before wading back into the ever evaporating pool of matches.
“You know what? He has this coming. It’s not me, or our system. It’s him,” she said, taking an aggressive sip of her drink.
“There’s my girl,” Yen said with a grin.
As the pair of women arrived at the office they were pleased to see Fox waiting just outside.
“Blizzard called and said you may need assistance escorting someone off of the premises,” Fox said, folding his arms. “Who is it?”
“Commander Neyo,” Daria said, eyes locked onto Fox’s visor.
Fox sighed in irritation. “I should have known. Alright, I’ll be here when you need me.”
“Thank you, Fox,” Daria replied, as they entered the lobby.
“Oh, thank the Maker,” Blizzard hissed. “He’s been out here twice to ask where you are.”
“I’ll handle it from here,” Daria assured him, waltzing back to her office.
“Commander Neyo, you’re in my office during my lunch break again.” She took her seat behind the desk, resting her arms on the surface and clasping her hands together.
“Look, Ms. Trace, despite your reputation, you’ve been unsuccessful in finding what I’m looking for,” Neyo said, sitting back in his chair, and narrowing his eyes at Daria.
“You’ve rejected the last 5 matches for,” Daria paused as she brought up his file. “Ah, here we go. Insubordination, too affectionate, a clear disregard for authority, disrespect, and today’s lucky lady: frivolous hobbies?”
“Some foolishness with stuffed animals,” Neyo supplied. “I need someone obedient, self-sufficient, respectful, with the approved list of hobbies I sent to you yesterday.”
Daria looked at him, eyes reading his face like a book.
“No.”
“Excuse me.”
“Is this your first time hearing the word? I said no,” Daria repeated. “You don’t want a partner; you want a subordinate you can sleep with. That’s not why we’re here.”
“You had better watch your tone, Trace,” Neyo said, voice dropping to a low pitch, meant to intimidate.
“The only thing I’ll be watching is you leaving my office. I’m exercising clause 15c of our terms and conditions.” Daria pulled up the documents on her datapad, and passed it to the commander, clearing her throat before reciting the clause in question. “Owing to the fact that matchmaking is not an exact science, and therefore cannot be guaranteed, our matchmakers, that’s me, reserve the right to terminate the services of any client, that’s you, should it become clear our matchmakers are unable to assist the client in acquiring a successful match.”
Neyo stared at the datapad a moment, before looking up to meet Daria’s eyes. The glint in his brown eyes was downright dangerous, but Daria had gone toe to toe with politicians, the rich, and the entitled of every species. There was nothing but ice in her veins when a man challenged her.
“I’ve done all I can do for you, and I do not believe a continued professional relationship is in our best interest. Now would you like to show yourself out, or would you prefer an escort from Commander Fox?”
Once it became clear that Daria was not some shiny, who would roll over for him, Neyo decided to snatch up what was left of his dignity and vacate the premises. As the disgruntled commander’s steps faded down the corridor, Daria released a shaky breath, and relaxed into her office chair.
Blizzard’s head popped around the corner. “Absolute. Kriffing. Legend. I’m telling all the boys.”
Daria looked up at him with a grin, and took a sip of her watered down caf. “Ugh, non-profit or not, he owes me an iced caf.”
Blizzard’s laugh could be heard all the way back to his desk.
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the-roo-too · 2 years ago
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알고 싶지 않아 -> idol! choi yunjin
-idols often change their hair colours before a comeback
warnings: leaving the group; break up; they both get hate from the public; bad decisions were made
genre: angst
notes: also credits for @cfvgbhndun-new-blog 🫦
『• • • ✎ • • •』
when a group hasn’t released any songs for a couple months, the fans start looking for clues for a possible comeback. especially if a particular idol has been wearing their hood lately.
although entwurf came out long before funky glitter christmas, yunjin liked the pink hair. especially because her favourite person did it. but because she also wanted to try something new every once in a while, she convinced her girlfriend to change the colour to black. it fit the march comeback the ceo informed them of and she thought it would look good.
usually the colour change signifies something. yunjin hoped the nswers would catch it.
『• • • ✎ • • •』
BREAKING: JINNI OF NMIXX CONFIRMED DATING L/N Y/N, THE GROUP’S STYLIST
『• • • ✎ • • •』
“i don’t think this is working out.” you whipped your head to look at the black haired girl. she begged you to change the colour just before the news about you two dating came out, and you couldn’t help but think that was a bad omen.
“what do you mean?”
“us. whatever this is.” she gestured between the two of you, a deep frown on her face.
“is this about the hate? we knew it would come! sure, it’s a bit more than we expected but-“
“a bit more? people are hating on the whole group because of us!” you couldn’t look yunjin in the eyes. she was right, of course, but your heart broke a little hearing her words.
“…it’s only been a day, i’m sure it’ll get better-“
“it won’t. it’s all people are talking about. the manager said it’ll ruin the group at this pace.” her face was void of emotion, which you couldn’t understand. while you felt as if your heart was being ripped apart, she appeared indifferent.
“jinni, you’re being ridiculous! a while more and people will forget about the whole thing. don’t you want us to be happy?”
“i do! i fucking do, y/n. and i think we’ll be both happier if we break up. this isn’t doing is right.” she stood up, her façade finally breaking. you could see the little tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “i’m leaving. jinyoung wants me out and i agree- it’ll be for the best.”
she slammed the doors to her dorm room, leaving you to cry on your own.
『• • • ✎ • • •』
she didn’t bother speaking with you before she left the dorm. you went to the unnie line of nmixx, hoping they would at least comfort you somehow, maybe even talk with jinni. before they could do so, the black haired girl was ready. the seven of them cried for a long while and not once did yunjin look back at you. maybe it was for the better. it’s not like you were going to see her again.
she sobbed her poor heart out, hugging her now former members one by one before the manager came in. before she left, she promised to keep in touch with everyone, but you had a feeling ‘everyone’ didn’t include you. not anymore.
when the door after her slammed shut, a uncomfortable silence enveloped the room. you could feel the eyes burning in your head as you stared on the ground, tears dripping down your cheeks.
“i-i’m sorry-“ a sob cut you off as you crouched, hiding you face in your hands. soon, you could hear the hesitant footsteps before a couple pairs of arms wrapped around you.
you all knew nmixx wouldn’t be the same anymore. you also knew you were lost without her. you were lost and there was no one to guide you anymore.
『• • • ✎ • • •』
not that the public could be surprised, the confirmation of your breakup with jinni was released soon after the news of her departure from the group. that was all in early december. it was march now.
unsurprisingly, yunjin hasn’t shared much with the girls. they did talk often, you could even hear haewon bring you up on the phone once or twice durning the recording of the newest music video, but you never got to know much of what she said. when the leader of the group last spoke with the former member, she only winced when she came back and saw you. it was easier for everyone if you didn’t press the matter.
especially now, that expérgo was soon to come out. you barely got to keep your job after the whole scandal, mostly because the rest of the group insisted you were the best when working with them.
you were so caught up with the recent nmixx’s comeback, you didn’t have time to go on social media too much. had it not been for kyujin telling you, you’d never know jinni had a personal account on instagram now. the maknae of the group gave you the news while you were doing her makeup for the photo session. she also said to contact her. ‘i’ll be for the better’.
but since when were you and yunjin for the better?
『• • • ✎ • • •』
you stared at the phone in your hand. instagram opened, there was yunjin’s accout. you wondered if she would notice if you followed her now. what would you actually do if she would notice.
you pressed the ‘follow’ button before you could talk yourself out of it. it was done. nothing tragic happened. right?
suddenly, you got a direct message notification.
jiniyxxn is typing…
『• • • ✎ • • •』
funnily enough, yunjin also stared at her phone now. of course she recognised your username the moment it popped up in her feed. you wondered if it was hard for you to find her, then again, she herself reached to the private account of her former members first thing.
her finger hovered over the send button. was it awkward to write now, after more than three months of no contact?
she had a lot of time to think about everything. about you, and her, and the girls. leaving the company back then was a obvious choice, the ceo gave her no other options.
leaving you along with the company seemed like the smartest choice. or maybe she was just scared the two of you would break up because of the distance. she was always scared of losing you. funny, because she broke it off in the end.
did it hurt you as much as it did her?
she glanced at the streak of hair she was nervously twirling in her hand. the strands that used to be black not so long ago were now turned pink, again.
jinni looked down at her phone. was this a smart idea?
screw it. she was bad at making smart ideas.
jiniyxxn: you always liked it when my hair was pink
『• • • ✎ • • •』
BREAKING: FORMER NMIXX MEMBER JINNI RUMOURED TO BE JOINING UAP
w0nlvr: jinni is back?!
nm1xx_1s_7: SHES BACK YALL
gg_st4n: it’s jini now?
lilys-captions: anyone knows what happened to the stylist girl tho? what is going on?
lilys-captions ➪ s3cret_stylist: i don’t want to know, and i don’t think you all should try and figure it out
『• • • ✎ • • •』
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thomine · 1 year ago
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beneath the surface : xiao
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pair: xiao x reader info: general audiences, sport injuries, past experiences of drowning, modern au, intentionally lowercase, not proofread
summary: your love for diving is tested, and xiao doesn’t make quitting easy either.
word count: 1.1k words series: day 1 of au august 2023 / prompt: sports links: work tag
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“watch,” the sports anchor says as the crowd at the olympic hall hushes. 
you shut your eyes and take a deep breath. this isn’t just any ordinary diver—it’s olympic diver xiao from liyue. he broke as much bones as he did for records in diving. this is a chance you don’t want to miss, yet seeing him wobble his weight on the flimsy board makes your palms sweaty.
you can feel the tension of the board beneath you, experience the rush of air as he leaps. you are no foreign to the procedure as a diver yourself.
breath hitched in your throat, you lean forward as he does his twist and jumps, but before he can rip the water, you find yourself victim to fear. you close your eyes and cover your ears. the audience roars. only then do you release that breath you held, and watch in awe as xiao’s dark hair breaks through the water’s surface.
shamefully, you look down, avoiding the heavy gaze of your coach that brought you here to teach you a lesson, one you know but find hard to execute.
thinking about it attracts pain in your knees to return. you press them together, a hand over your right knee as your fingers graze over the scar.
“graceful, isn’t he?” your coach says, arms crossed. “to think he had an ankle sprain a few weeks before this dive.”
you nod slowly, unsure what you should say. you can’t promise your coach anything, not when you’ve yet to win your fears.
it’s uncomfortable to hear him remain quiet as the background cheers. the announcer releases xiao’s marks. no surprise he jumps to first place.
“i need to use the washrooms,” you mumble, placing your items down. your coach barely gives you any form of acknowledgement as his eyes are fixed on xiao who does a bow before heading off.
finding an abandoned spot beside the toilet behind the hub, you sit on the floor.
sigh.
you wear your hoodie up, pulling its strings so the edges cover your face.
the longer you stall the harder it is for your body to return. your coach was right that you had to make your decision now.
you do love diving, but when you tore your ACL, the months in the hospital were a perfect place to begin reflecting if you’re willing to do it again.
and you did, but you didn’t love diving to the extent you’d go through such pains a third time. 
your career, although amounting to nothing compared to xiao’s, was still something, and your coach had faith if you pushed past this mental barrier as all divers do with the waters before their dive, then you’d go big.
“bigger than xiao?” you asked once.
“of course not,” the coach said. “you can’t even go through an ACL tear twice, you think you can experience it 5 times?”
a slap to the face, but a little reassuring that you wouldn’t dethrone your idol. 
something cold touches your hoodie and wets it. you bring it down to give whoever who messed with you a strong glare, only to meet with amber eyes and familiar mess of dark hair.
it’s a sports drink, fresh from the vending machine a few meters down. xiao’s holding it, arms outstretched towards you.
“… thank you,” you mutter as you take it.
“how’s your knee?” he asks, arms in his pockets. he changed from his swimsuit to his casual clothes fast.
“the news really loved covering it, huh?” you quip as you open the bottle, the fizz of the drink rising.
xiao doesn’t respond to your commentary. just stares, patiently waiting for a reply.
“well, uh,” you add after trying not to be awkward in the silence he brings, “i guess it’s fine. sometimes it feels like i tore it again while doing small tasks, but the doctor inspected it and said it’s healing fine. how’s your ankle?”
he balances his weight on the healthier ankle, then gives his left a twirl.
“it’s recovering.”
“have you ever thought of taking a break?” you ask out of the blue, although this question has haunted you for months. “even with new injuries, you never seem to stop.”
xiao takes the empty spot beside you. it’s crazy to see him so close. the last this happened was when you first tore your ACL at the Olympics. you almost drowned if it wasn’t for him jumping into the waters the moment he noticed something went wrong.
he was also nice enough to volunteer going with you to the hospital. throughout the ambulance ride, he held your hand and told you tips to bear with the pain.
“i don’t know what i’d do if i wasn’t diving,” he answers, voice barely there. “the pain becomes an afterthought soon enough.”
before you can question him further, he stands and makes his leave.
can you see yourself doing anything other than diving?
yes, you can. you have dreams of opening a little cafe at one point in your life. there’s also that dream of using the money earned from diving to travel the world. you can’t be diving forever, right?
head in hands, it dawns on you how isolating xiao’s fame is. to think he has nothing he can look forward to after his career as a diver… it was depressing.
“xiao!” you call out impulsively before his figure disappears. when he turns to you, you find yourself lost for words. would it be out of your place, a mere fan whom he so happened to have exchanged a few words on certain occasions, have any right to say anything? 
his dreams; his passions; who he is beyond diving? they are questions that bog your mind every time your eyes land on him. who is the boy behind the poster and newsletter and whatever the news make him out to be?
you fiddle with the ends of your hoodie. time is slipping away yet the words don’t co-operate.
there are too many things to say—
“i owe you two,” you settle in the end.
he looks at you confused.
you raise the drink, then add, “plus, that time you accompanied me to the hospital. after my… accident.”
he nods.
“diving is a dangerous sport,” he says. “if you don’t have to means to bear with the pain behind a diver’s elegance, then don’t. it is not worth.”
and he leaves. you’re alone with the drink and his advice.
it pushes you oh so gently to your preferred answer to your coach, but something tells you that you need to brace whatever impact this career will bring to your weary body if you want the opportunity to repay him what he did to you.
you gulp down the drink like fuel, readying yourself to face your coach who’s probably looking for you right now.
will you regret this?
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author's note: first post for au augst! not my best work but i think about this au occasionally. i just think it's so fitting for xiao considering his gameplay and the nature of diving.
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niamflopped · 2 years ago
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/louis-tomlinson-when-one-direction-split-i-was-mortified-it-felt-like-another-loss-mtlh2wgv2
Louis Tomlinson is leaning back on his chair, feet up on a radiator, hands clasped behind his head and a cigarette on the go. “All right?” he says, grinning impishly.
Despite huge global success with One Direction (70 million albums sold), which prompted a fanaticism that made Beatlemania look tame, he seems remarkably unaffected and far more normal than one might expect from someone with 35.8 million Twitter followers. He’s a 31-year-old so unassumingly bloke-next-door that the bloke next door wouldn’t look twice.
“I’ve always had a problem with ‘ego’,” he says, “and I’ve always been worried about being one of those people in the public eye who just loses all sense of reality, and becomes an arsehole.” As if by way of explanation, he adds: “I’m from Doncaster.”
Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Zian Malik, Liam Payne and Niall Horan, 2011
And so while his former 1D bandmate Harry Styles, a superstar, floats through life like the fashion world’s favourite clothes horse, Tomlinson kits himself out in JD Sports: Kappa T-shirt, black sweatpants, Adidas socks, scuffed trainers. When he tells you he often frequents his local pub unmolested, you believe him.
“If someone does come up after an hour to ask for a selfie, I won’t say no and I won’t run away,” he says, “’specially if I’m three pints deep!”
Of the five members of 1D, Tomlinson has had the slowest start to a solo career. There are compelling reasons for this — family tragedy for one — but he’s also had to figure out who he is without the band around him. “With this job,” he says, “there’s so much room for overthinking, you know? Someone from the record label will tell you they like your stuff, but you find yourself thinking: yeah, but do they? It’s the fans that help you really believe in yourself.”
In the band, Zayn Malik had the best voice and Styles had the best everything else. While the other three — Tomlinson, Liam Payne and Niall Horan — were hardly driftwood, each has nevertheless had to dig deep to carve out a solo persona that would compel beyond the bubble.
“I do miss the boys,” he says, “and I do definitely miss being one of the five, but I like doing my own thing too. It was time.”
The former bandmates at the BRIT Awards 2012
It’s a bright winter’s day, and the man in sports casual is enjoying special dispensation here in the hotel: permission to light up. Had this been denied, there might well have been a problem, for Tomlinson chain-smokes with the wild abandon of Mad Men’s Don Draper.
After the release of his second solo album, Faith in the Future, in November, he adds another necessary notch in the belt of any self-respecting pop star next month: the documentary. All of Those Voices is a routine behind-the-scenes look at 21st-century celebrity but stands out for the multiple crises of confidence Tomlinson feels any time he’s not on stage.
“This is a confidence game for anyone,” he says earnestly, “and there’s been plenty of moments of vulnerability throughout the entire process.” An overriding concern of the documentary is not just whether people would be interested in him, but whether they’d take him, someone discovered on a TV talent show, seriously.
When Styles won his Grammy awards this month — he collected two and won four Brits — he used his acceptance speech to say that “this doesn’t happen to people like me very often”. This was swiftly ridiculed across social media because of course white men tend to win quite a lot. But what he likely meant was that it doesn’t happen to the product of manufactured boy bands, many of whom have the use-by date of a pint of milk.
“Only Harry knows what he means there, it’s hard to speculate,” Tomlinson says, “but we all came from relatively humble beginnings, and now we are where we are.”
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But while Styles is a once-in-a-generation talent and knows it, his erstwhile bandmates — and this one in particular — need convincing.
Louis Tomlinson comes from a big family — his mother, Johannah Deakin, married twice and had seven children — and was a hopeful child actor before in 2010 auditioning for The X Factor. This is where 1D were created, “masterminded” by Louis Walsh. Deakin, who had Tomlinson when she was 19, was his biggest fan and they’d always been close. When, for example, Tomlinson lost his virginity, it was she he told first, not his friends.
Louis, along with Adrien Brody, was a guest on The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2022
TERENCE PATRICK/CBS VIA GETTY IMAGES
In 2016, a year after One Direction split, she died from leukaemia, aged 42. Two years later, his 18-year-old sister, Félicité, who’d been struggling to get over her mother’s death, accidentally overdosed on cocaine, painkillers and an anxiety drug. The combined loss hit him hard. Aside from the single he wrote about his mother’s passing, 2020’s Two of Us, his mourning has been largely private.
He squints through a veil of cigarette smoke. “Some of the things that have happened recently have been quite drastic, yeah, but then so much in my life seems to have been pretty extreme, one way or the other.” In 2016, at the age of 25, a brief relationship with a Californian stylist, Briana Jungwirth, resulted in a son. “There’ve been challenging times, definitely. It’s funny, but I couldn’t even tell you how many years ago my mum passed, I just blank it out. But for the first 18 months, I’d take any form of bad luck personally. I’d feel every tiny thing. But now I genuinely feel I’ve come out the other side. I feel more empathy for everything and everyone these days.”
● Louis Tomlinson review — screaming singalongs
● Meet Harry Styles’s inner circle
After his 2020 debut album, Walls, failed to set the world alight, Tomlinson called time on his relationship with Simon Cowell. “It was mostly amicable,” he says, nodding. “Simon always had my best interests at heart, and I liked him. He had his faults of course, like all of us, but it was always inevitable I’d have to go off and do my own thing.”
His new record, then, was a leap into the unknown and he elected to write not with professional songwriters but rather fellow creative artists: Theo Hutchcraft from the band Hurts, Joe Cross from the Courteeners and the singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow. “And that was a big difference, huge. These are people who live and breathe music. It’s the first time I felt really comfortable doing my own stuff, you know?”
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Previously he’d been encouraged to sing like a nice young pop star should, without regional inflection. “When I was in the band,” he says, “working with professional songwriters whose entire aim was to write the hit single, they’d tell me that singing in my natural accent wasn’t commercial. Sorry, but what a shit idea! Who wants to sound like everybody else? I dumbed down a little bit in the band, because you do, but I’ve learnt who I am now.”
The album, which has its inspiration firmly in early Noughties indie, sounds more Kaiser Chiefs than One Direction. A risk, then. But when it came out, it debuted at No 1. While this did wonders for his confidence, it’s clear from the documentary that he still needs people — a support group — around him. He actively courts the friendship of his touring band, not necessarily a given among solo pop stars, and he seems almost always sociable. It’s when he’s not up for group activity that people worry. There’s a revealing moment in the documentary of him having just appeared on James Corden’s US talk show. Backstage Corden, an old friend, pleads with him not to go quiet on him afterwards. “You vanish, you change your number, no one knows [where you are],” he says.
Until recently Tomlinson lived in London with his long-term girlfriend, the model Eleanor Calder, but recent reports suggest they’ve split up and he’s dating another model, Sofie Nyvang. Life, clearly, is complicated. Perhaps that’s why he smokes so much. He says, though, that he feels finally relieved of the myriad pressures that once clung to being a pop star whose fanbase was predominantly teenage. Such as?
Louis and his mother Johannah, 2015
DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES
“Well, being a role model for one. I never wanted that. I always had to worry whether it was OK if, say, I was seen here or if I could get away with smoking a joint there, before concluding: hmm, probably not. But I never wanted to be the perfect pop star, especially in the climate of Instagram. I don’t want to put an artificial world out there. I think it’s important that people see your scars, your flaws.”
It’s never easy growing up in public and Tomlinson had no choice. “When One Direction split up,” he says, “I was mortified, I was absolutely gutted. I was a bit bitter, I suppose because it just felt like another loss to me. But I’ve a better understanding of things now, and there’s not as much anger. It is what it is.
“Getting back together at some point is hard to imagine right now,” he continues, “but I’d be surprised if we lived out our lives and didn’t have a moment where we had a reunion, or whatever you want to call it. I’d be up for that.”
When I ask what it’s like watching Styles’s ascendance into the biggest star of his generation — something that might delay such a reunion — he blows out a long plume of smoke.
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“Well, it’s not a surprise is it? We were always aware that Harry fit that mould, and it’s been an amazing thing to watch. Envy? At the start maybe, when I was trying to find my feet, but it’s never healthy to cross-reference your own success with others is it? These days I’m learning to elevate myself in those moments when I have to. I didn’t know how to do that before, but now? Now I know I f***ing can.”
All of Those Voices is in cinemas from March 22, allofthosevoices.com
****
Sea is raging over this interview because the Times journalist praises Harry too much and keeps mentioning Louis' rabid chainsmoking!
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blindchandelure · 7 months ago
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The first time I watched ESC was 2015. Being from the US, I had never even heard of it. But a European mutual kept posting memes about it, and I got curious. I watched the contest again in 2016, but I didn’t really enjoy it. So I didn’t watch Eurovision in 2017. Or 2018. Or 2019.
But, in 2021, I saw some random shitpost that said something like “wow, the Finnish contestants are giving the emo kids everything they want 🙄”
I was like. Hm. Well. I’m an emo kid. So I went and watched a recording of the semifinal broadcast, which had ended 2 hours before.
Blind Channel’s performance, as we all know, blew my mind. 🤯 I called up my friend (who had also never heard of ESC) and told him he had to come over and watch the grand final with me.
He ordered Violent Pop on Amazon the next day.
Ironically, I got so caught up in my brief crush on Damiano, that I didn’t listen to that album until August. 😅 It was the release of Balboa + the Allas Sea Pool show that led me to actually join the BC fandom properly.
I wrote my first BC fic in December 2021. And then for the next 2 years, that was the only fandom I wrote for.
I guess I’m just thinking about….how easily I could’ve missed it. If I hadn’t seen that random text post….that’s 3 concerts I wouldn’t have attended. 2 adjacent bands I would never have started listening to. 56 fanfics I wouldn’t have written. 1 AO3 community event that I wouldn’t have moderated (twice). And countless friends that I would’ve never made.
I’m happy that I found y’all 3 years ago. 🖤
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dynamic-power · 1 year ago
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The Happiness We Deserve
Chapter 2
Read it on ao3 here
Ship: Gallavich
Rated: E
CW: mature content, language.
Lip has news
Read part 1 here
Jay was long gone by the time Mickey woke up. The side of the bed he slept on when he stayed over was cold and there was a note left on the night stand. Jay had scribbled down the name of the hotel he’d be staying at as well as details about his flight back to Chicago in a week.
As Mickey read the end of the note a third time - I’m going to miss you, Querido - he was reminded yet again about how decent a man Jay really was. He was good, and what they had was good.
Mickey wasn’t in love with him - they’d only been together a few months - but he cared about Jay more than he had any of his last few boyfriends. Jay seemed to genuinely like him, too, southside-sharpened edges and all.
Jay had grown up northside. He had a college degree and a house in a nice neighborhood and a job that paid six figures. He didn’t have so much as a parking ticket on his record, had smoked pot exactly twice before meeting Mickey, and had looked positively horrified the first time he’d seen the unregistered, very illegal gun Mickey kept in his apartment. When they’d first been getting to know each other, Mickey took a sort of sick joy in shocking Jay with stories about his past.
And yet, Jay had stuck around. Jay said it was because he liked Mickey for his hidden soft side, but Mickey suspected that it had more to do with the fact that Mickey lived on the ege of danger, and something about that was intoxicating to straight-laced Jay.
Whatever the reason was, what they had was good . Mickey should be happy. There was no reason he shouldn’t be falling in love with Jay.
Except.
Except it was all so safe, comfortable, tame . Mickey didn’t always want safe and tame.
Jay’s idea of a good Friday night was dinner and drinks followed by a night on the couch, watching a movie. He rarely ever got properly drunk or high and never really understood Mickey’s occasional desire to release extra energy through violence. To him, spicing up their sex life meant fucking somewhere other than bed.
It was fine. But part of Mickey wanted more than just fine. He wanted nice nights in, but he also wanted to go out, get trashed, pick fights, fuck dirty. He wanted someone who was just as willing to find trouble, who wouldn’t hesitate to throw a punch for him. He wanted rough housing instead of foreplay and hard, filthy, kinky sex. He wanted the pain that came from making out with a split lip and the gross thrill of tasting his own blood and cum mixing on his partners tongue. He wanted to be thrown around, shoved into furniture and walls, properly railed -
Sex with Jay was great. Jay had become good at determining when Mickey needed to be taken apart slowly and when he just needed a quick, hard fuck. But even when they were in the middle of those quick, hard fucks, there was still a gentleness in Jay that made Mickey crave something different.
He needed that feeling of single-minded desire, needed that fire that would burn him from the inside if it wasn’t sated. He never felt that with Jay.
It was the sort of passion he hadn’t felt since Ian.
He shook himself from his thoughts before he could slip down that rabbit hole. He rolled out of bed despite the relatively early hour, cringing as dried cum and lube pulled at the skin of his thighs. He dragged himself to the shower and scrubbed away the stentch of the bar and sex and resolutely ignored the flashes of memories, of red hair and green eyes and big hands. He also ignored his aching cock.
This was why he couldn’t think about him. He was happy with Jay, satisfied, stable. He couldn’t compare Ian and Jay; it was like comparing apples to oranges.
I never did like oranges all that much, was his last thought before he slammed off the water and snatched his towel off the rack.
-----
It took a little while to gather all of the adults into the living room of the Gallagher house after dinner on Monday night. Parly because it wasn’t exactly easy to get all five kids upstairs and settled with Franny, and partly because none of the Gallagher adults or their partners knew when it was time to shut up.
“What’s your news?” Mickey finally asked once they were all present, raising his voice to be heard over all of the side conversations going on.
“Right,” Lip said, clearing his throat and wringing his hands in front of him. “Uh, it’s about Ian.” That got everyone’s attention immediately. As far as Mickey was aware, Ian hadn’t reached out to any of them since he’d left Chicago more than a decade ago. “He’s, uh, he’s coming to visit.”
Mickey was glad he was already sitting; with the way his entire body reacted, he was sure his knees would have given out if he’d been standing. His stomach was in knots, his heart was racing, he felt his whole face heat up. He knew that more than one person was now staring at him. He picked out a spot on the floor between his feet and refused to look up from it.
There were a few tense moments where no one said anything before all hell broke loose.
“Ian’s coming?”
“Why didn’t you tell us you’d heard from him?”
“Wait, isn’t Ian your brother?”
“Shut up. One at a fuckin’ time,” Lip snapped. “Yes, Ian is our brother. I only just heard from him on Thursday, and we wanted to iron out the details before telling you.”
“When is he coming?” Debbie asked, sounding much more excited than Mickey felt.
“He’ll be here Sunday,” Lip said.
Mickey’s stomach lurched. It was real, he realized, it was happening. He managed to push himself to his feet. “I need a cigarette,” he said as he stumbled towards the door.
-----
He was lighting his third cigarette when the door behind him opened and closed again. Mickey was expecting Carl, so he was a little startled when Lip sat down beside him.
“How are you doing?”
Micke shrugged. He offered the pack of smokes to Lip, who took it with a nod. “I dunno. I’m surprised, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Lip said with a nod as he lit up. “I was, too.”
“Why now? What changed?”
Lip didn’t answer immediately. He seemed to be debating how to answer and it set Mickey on edge. “He’s met someone,” Lip finally said, “and he wants us to meet him.”
“Fuck,” Mickey said without meaning to. It shouldn’t matter; they hadn’t seen each other in almost 15 years. He was with Jay now. He was-
He was happy.
Right?
He and Lip sat and smoked in silence for a few more minutes, soaking up the clear, cool April night.
“How is he?”
Lip shrugged, stubbing out his smoke. “He sounded good. Sounded healthy, y’know? He ended up in New York, I guess. He’s a paramedic. Rides around in an ambulance and saves life and that shit.”
“Fuck,” Mickey repeated. “Bet he loves that shit.”
Lip snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, sounded like it.” He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Mickey braced himself again for whatever unpleasant thing Lip needed to say. “Look, Mick, you don’t have to see him if you don’t want. They are staying in a hotel so I can let you know when he’s here and I can make sure we avoid the Alibi while-”
“Nah, man,” Mickey said, feeling a wave of appreciation for Lip, but also feeling a little stupid that Lip was offering to run interference for him. They were all adults; they could handle this. “It’s okay, don’t worry ‘bout it.” He took the last drag off his cigarette. “Is it weird if I kinda wanna see him?”
“Nah,” Lip answered immediately. “You two have a lot of fuckin’ history. Honestly, it makes sense that you maybe want to see how he is. Rub your boyfriend in his face, too.”
“Fuck, Jay.” Mickey scrubbed at his face. “I need to talk to him.”
“How much does he know about Ian?”
“Not fuckin’ enough to be meeting him on Sunday,” Mickey admitted. “He knows who he is. I’ve got his name tattooed on me, for fucks sake. But he assumed it was a drunken mistake, and I’ve just never corrected him. We’ve just… Fuck. We haven’t talked about it.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, I mean, how do I explain to my current guy that the love of my fuckin’ life was-” Mickey cut himself off abruptly.
He’d never really said it outloud before, but part of him had always wondered if Ian was it for him; if that had been his one and only chance at love and happiness and every relationship after that had been a futile attempt to get that chance back. He didn’t want to have that conversation with Lip; he barely wanted to have that conversation with himself. He was grateful when Lip didn’t say anything about his near slip.
“The offer still stands,” he said instead. “Ian is only here for a couple weeks, so just let me know if you want to avoid him.”
“Thans, man.”
“Anytime, Mick.”
-----
Part 3
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omegaremix · 10 months ago
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Academy Annex, 2022.
I had a moment thinking about keeping my music-collecting quotient up, specifically in the areas of noise rock, noise, post-punk / d.i.y., cassettes, and other diamond finds I played on Omega WUSB. One example: Wharf Cat Records stands as one of my all-time favorite labels and it helps that they’re from Brooklyn, New York City. For some reason they have this inexplicable aesthetic to them. You know where it’s from but what and how, exactly? From what I’ve seen, it feels like it’s part of the upper-echelon of obscure music and style like where Ascetic House sits right now. There was something about Boulders’ Rock N Roll Will Never Die that stuck in the back of my mind; their sound, vision, artwork, their origins and what surrounds it. Tommy Conte and Cameron Worden’s world is far and away from what’s out there and it’s what I look for in all things Omega.
So I was curious to see what the going price for the album went for on Discogs: less than $3.00. Why can’t I have it for that price? Academy Annex was selling it, so I also checked out what else they had. David Vassalotti’s Broken Rope and Water From Your Eyes’ Structure, also Wharf Cat releases, were sold for less than $6.00 each. Then something else caught my eye: two Chondritic Sound cassettes from JS Aurelius and Believer/Law (if you know Uniform-related matters). Throw in some hip-hop singles and a couple of jazz / fusion records and that’s $45.00 well spent including shipping and New York State bloodsucker tax. Academy Annex also had another separate Discogs account where I found York Factory Complaint’s Lost In The Spectacle (more Uniform-related matters) and other releases from Nick Klein, Vagra, and Sleaford Mods. That’s another $31.00 and the second of two shipments Academy sent to me. Only Brooklyn record stores had been carrying the good stuff that my other island record stores wouldn’t even imagine carrying. “That’s it” I said. A visit to their physical store was in order.
It’s the final day of February. Since the beginning of the month I had hoped to visit Academy Annex in Greenpoint. I had this urge for years to take the train on a wintry Sunday because I had those great feelings only a few years ago. Anxiety does get in the way and then you stay local but productive. In the right now those feelings still linger on because those recent Winters provided some sentimental soundtracks, and I always wanted to get that specific Brooklyn experience out of my system. It had something to do with former follower and interest of mine who lived there, and it stands forever a ‘what-if’ every time I walk through Greenpoint because she’s no longer in the picture. It was finally time to go.
Academy Annex touted itself as Brooklyn’s largest independent record store. You walk in and you won’t believe it. Compared to my island record stores, Academy was pretty small. Remember, this is Greenpoint, a hipster fantasy land. Tenants and store owners are being hit up for twice as much and get half in return of what everyone else has. I take a few seconds to slow down to see that this place is a mess. There’s an upstairs balcony full of junk and beams that yell ‘under renovation’ where co-workers sort out new stock and is off limits to their customers. Stacks of boxes are plentiful and all over the place. Behind the counter are tattered walls, newspaper clippings, various old merchandise and ornaments hung up on the wall. To the right are other columns of half-empty bins. In front of it is a near-empty old glass display occupied by a hand puppet and a pair of old boots. How much are they paying per month to live inside that case? On the brighter side, vinyl occupies 99% of the store and they have their hand in everything. Soul, blues, and jazz? Check. Metal, new wave, and hip-hop singles? It’s there. African, Eastern Brazil, Latin, reggae, New York / New Jersey house and techno? Got it. Look even harder and you’ll find a very distinct category of their own: ‘horoscope’. How sweet.
Right as I enter, the cassette bins are to my right. I immediately grabbed tapes from Keith Murray, Grand Puba, Boogie Down Productions, The Ultramagnetic MC’s, Terminator X, and Apache. After my tape grab, I look up and find a crate-diggers dream: Wee’s You Can Fly On My Aeroplane. Numero Group re-issued it on white vinyl. Never would I imagine finding anything like that in relation to what surrounds my single-digit Brooklyn youth. Wee is a gold example of what I look for in terms of crate-digging and vinyl treasures and those can be found on Omega WUSB’s bonus broadcasts. I’m not even five minutes in the store and already I’m at $50.00. Let’s see how much faster the total goes up.
Right below the cassette shelves are the CD bins. Five each or three for ten. They would be the least expensive finds Academy offered to thin the bill. The hip-hop still continued with 3rd Bass and a still-sealed Dead Prez RBG. Other wild cards included Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Tom Tom Club, Rollins Band, and The Men’s Drift; one of two Sacred Bones records I’d nab. Most importantly, I got my hands on Depeche Mode’s Some Great Reward. One of my most valuable allies / followers here have re-introduced me to them. I told her that if I found any in my travels, I’d take it home. No questions asked. (At this moment of writing, we’re discussing it.)
I’m not one for 7″ records or 45′s unless it’s punk or hardcore. They had one box dedicated to them amongst a section of at least 25 boxes of cheap pop, soul, R&B, and other stuff. Hello, Brandy’s “Clown Pain” 7″. We meet again. This time for $9.00 as opposed to Rough Trade’s asking price of $15.00. This is the d.i.y. stuff I dream about having in my hands. Grabbed some Antiseen on translucent magenta vinyl, Poison Girls, Spizzenergi’s “Soldier Soldier” (a fun one we played one summer on Omega WUSB), Asshole Parade, and Jayne County & The Electric Chairs in solidarity with Long Island punk luminary Jimi LaLumia. I also got Martin Atkin’s Brian Brain project, Love Child Plays Moondog, and Ingstangd which looked like some pretty serious shit. On the subject of Swedish punk bands, no Totalitar. Fuck!
Now the LP’s. Academy is considered a collector store. They buy collections for top dollar, grade each record, fit them in plastic sleeves and put them out. Plenty of arrivals can be found for less than ten dollars. It’s the new releases, re-pressings, and new old stock that could potentially hurt your wallet. Add the fact that it’s a city store and Brooklyn’s rent prices are well-documented, and you can’t help to think that their prices are tough but fair on their end - sometimes. I thumbed through their hip-hop / rap singles section and couldn’t justify paying more than three dollars for something I can buy for a dollar from my island stores. Some of those singles apexed at $40.00. No. Thank. You. There were plenty of punk records from The Plasmatics, Subhumans UK, The Fall, and other acts but at $20.00 or more I had to pass. But it was some of the later vinyl grabs that made for some astonishing moments.
It was when I thumbed through their experimental section that there was no passing up two Throbbing Gristle records, Greatest Hits and Heathen Earth, a title I gave up once when Centereach’s None Of The Above was in existence. I finally have it and on blue vinyl. Those two Throbbing Gristle albums were a must-grab as I almost never see their titles anywhere. At $28.00 each, it was worth it. On that note, I wasn’t expecting finding a re-press of Robert Rental’s Paralysis e.p. Not exactly Thomas Leer & Rental’s The Bridge, but I’ll take anything. Micro-Phonies was the only Cabaret Voltaire album the store carried and that came with a $20.00 hit. After letting The Crackdown slip a few years ago, I took no chances. It still stings me to this day.
To my surprise, I found Sweeping Promise’s Hunger For A Way Out for $21.00. That’s now off my diamond list. It was that moment in which I re-considered Pure Hell for $24.00 because I asked if I really needed it, but thankfully I changed my mind. They had several copies of Shocked Minds and grabbed the least expensive one and on clear orange vinyl for five. Yves/Son/Ace was the only 12″ wild card I took home; purchased it on sight based on the attractive album cover and not knowing who they were. And I don’t know how this always happens, but I always find Excepter albums on vinyl for less than five dollars. This one? Self Destruction.  
I could not not pass up the jazz / fusion and soul section, or anything sample-related any time I’m in a store. Digging through those shelves gave me the biggest shock of the night: Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes’ Astral Traveling. That record has some songs on it that literally changed my life one turn-of-the-millennium summer overnight listening to WUSB, and it was one of the last Smith titles I needed.
But not all vinyl sections bled me dry. They have alphabetized columns and then eight shelves of new arrivals out in front of the store. The other Sacred bones record, Marissa Nadler’s For My Crimes was acquired for $12.00 and she’s only one of very few vocalists I’m into. No Parade’s Ceaseless Fire and George Benson’s Livin’ Inside Your Love were also had for five each.
That’s it. I’m done. Thirty minutes to closing and I’m spent. Time to cash out. I place my entire stack on the counter with the skinny timid young lady awaits. Of course, her name is Sarah. She tallied up the vinyl records as normal until she saw the Brandy 7″. She gave it to me for four instead of nine because the store had plenty of copies and wanted to get rid of them. She also gave me the stack of CDs for free because she saw I was buying a lot. I never ask for any discounts and felt bad that she did. I told her she didn’t have to do it because I want these independent record stores stay in business, but she kept on insisting. I sighed and gave up, but I’ll admit it was nice of her to do that even though she didn’t have to.
Total cost: $311.00, about $100.00 less than what I spent last Spring at (formerly Williamsburg’s) Rough Trade. Why does every Brooklyn record store excursion have to fucking run my pockets? I already answered that question here. Then again, Academy Annex wasn’t like Plainview’s Vinyl Bay 777 where everything was graded and priced so high that I felt hopeless walking out. Not really the case here. WUSB’sJ-Ro advised me that as a customer I would be playing their grading game because they knew their stuff and how much their stock was worth. But I just had two tax refunds hit my savings and I had the money, but you still want to be cost conscious.
The trip to Academy and the train ride back to Central Islip was the only way I’d end the Winter proper. It seems like I always make a visit to Brooklyn near or on the February / March border, and it only takes a second time to make it a regular thing. Lord only knows what city store I’ll hit up next year around this time, but I’m more focused on what will unfold in the next few months. You’ll know sooner than later.
Brandy: “Clown Pain” 7″
Spizzenergi: “Soldier Soldier” 7″
Asshole Parade: Asshole Parade 7″
Wayne County & The Electric Chairs: “Fuck Off” b/w “On The Crest” 7″
Brian Brain: “Jive 7″
Poison Girls: “One Good Reason” 7″
Antiseen: “We Got This Far (Without You)” b/w “(We Will Not) Remember You” 7″
Instangd: Mitt Svar Pa Ingenting 7″
Love Child: Love Child Plays Moondog 7″
Throbbing Gristle: Greatest Hits 12″
Wee: You Can Fly On My Airplane white vinyl 12″
Yves/Son/Ace: “Parade Of Thoughts” b/w “Can’t Sleep” 12″
Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes: Astral Travelling 12″
Sweeping Promises: Hunger For A Way Out 12″
Throbbing Gristle: Heathen Earth blue vinyl 12″
Robert Rental: Paralysis e.p. 12″
Shocked Minds: self-titled translucent orange 12″
Excepter: Self Destruction 12″
Pure Hell: Noise Addiction 12″
George Benson: Livin’ Inside Your Love 12″
Merissa Nadler: For My Crimes 12″
Cabaret Voltaire: Micro-Phonies 12″
No Parade: Ceaseless Fire 12″
Boogie Down Productions: By All Means Necessary CS
Apache: self-titled CS
Grand Puba: Reel To Reel CS
Keith Murray: The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World CS
Terminator X: & The Valley Of The Jeep Beats CS
Ultramagnetic M.C.’s, The: Fruits Of Nature CS
Depeche Mode: Some Great Reward CD
Tom Tom Club: self-titled CD
Rollins Band: The End Of Silence CD
3rd Bass: Derelicts Of Dialect CD
Dead Prez: RBG CD
Men, The: Drift CD
John Spencer Blues Explosion, The: Acme CD
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jewishrizahawkeye · 1 year ago
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I agree it's too early for rep TV, but her dancers are posting black hearts everywhere
And also... I was in the crowd on Nov 12th. I'm the "eldest" swiftie I know, so everyone I talked to (I'm talking about friends/acquaintances) and gave my opinion on the Nov 10th theory wasn't really happy with what I had to say, but I never believed she would announce it that day. Everyone really hoped she would (even really "new" fans)
The feeling I got from that is that we just want to be a part of things. We wanna be a part of the rerecording history. She's touring latam for the first time, and chances are she won't come back (for reasons I can describe if needed). She'll do Mexico again, but it's unlikely she'll do Argentina/Brazil again. And we all know that. We just want announcement like the US got (twice), and like Asia will probably get and Europe too.
I understand the whole conversation about demanding too much too often from her. I really do and I think it's a very valid point and something to be discussed. I miss when there were less of us and more interested in her actual music. But please understand we don't mean harm. We never got tour dates before this, we don't get merch (shipping is crazy expensive and they let you buy one of each only so you can't even pool in money with friends to share shipping costs), and we just wanna feel like we're part of her story too.
I know you haven't said anything but I needed to put this opinion out there and maybe someone will read it and understand what's going on.
Thank you for reading 🩵
hi, thank you for sharing.
i do understand all of this, i really do, and im going to try phrasing this in a way so i don’t come off rude.
i understand that you want to be apart of re-recording history but i still think latam is apart of it (correct me if i’m wrong). but you guys got to be there when 1989TV dropped and also so many other fun moments (like chiefs on the screen). and i can’t speak on taylor returning to latam because i’m not from there and don’t want to step over the line (and i don’t think it has anything to do with the whole T4F fiasco since that was the stadiums fault and taylor wouldn’t blame brazil on that). but a majority of the people i’m seeing turn out the theories are swifties from the states who are counting her steps in the reputation set and using math to prove reputation is next. if she did announce reputation tonight i’d 100% eat my words and be excited about it as i love reputation. but i still think at the end of the day it’s an INSANE thing to ask of taylor to announce another album. we ready got two this year, one last year, a whole concert movie, and so much more. and even before midnights i saw people complaining that we hadn’t gotten any new taylor announcements and how was anyone supposed to go on if we didn’t get one (when we had gotten two surprise albums not even a year ago).
again i get what you’re saying and do not want to come off as rude or mean in anyway. being a city that she announced something that big at is a thing to remember, but i don’t think it’s right to ask her to keep announcing and releasing stuff just to make a moment and be remembered. she’s literally just a person at the end of the day and she’s still doing everything to make this a memorable concert experience for everyone there. just because latam may not get a re-recording announcement doesn’t mean it’s not anyway less apart of the history of the re-recordings like any other place.
again, thank you for sharing your opinion and telling me this as it did give me a different view on this. but i don’t think she’ll announce it tonight as it’s still crazy close to 1989tv and she’s allowed to let her projects breathe.
i hope you have a good night 🫶🏻
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ericleo108 · 2 years ago
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03/28/2023 Click here for Spotify or Apple Music. “Going Gaga” is my 37th official release. This is the release for Friday March 31st but I scheduled the release three days early because it’s Lady Gaga’s birthday on the 28th of March. The track is inspired specifically by Gaga’s track “Bad romance.” 
I have a trope on my blog at EricLeo108.com called “cosmic luve” where I talk about how Gaia uses attractive mates such as Emma Watson, Selena Gomez, or Hailee Steinfeld to communicate through media semantics. For the latest post visit CosmicLuve.com. I haven’t made a new post in months, but Lady Gaga was the original cosmic luve back in 2012. There was always an underlying association tying the reference Emma Watson but Gaga was the front runner in my heart. Back then around 2012 I had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia and didn’t know what semantic priming was and hadn’t developed my theory of cosmic luve. I also wouldn’t come to term of having schizophrenia and needing medication until 2018.
Admittedly, Gaga put me through a lot of grief. I thought that she wanted to help me and was communicating through semantics on Facebook. I talk about this in my song “Talk to me” which is about Emma Watson but references the Lady Gaga situation. As an example of the semantics and cosmic luve back then, I had sold my motorcycle to pay for my first album “Edulution.” In the album I have a song called “Dionysus Rhythm” where I covertly reference Gaga. Then Gaga’s album cover for “Born This Way” was a motorcycle with her head for the front light. It was the first instance of coincidental semantics represented by an attractive mate which drove me crazy. I ended up going to New York twice to try and meet Gaga. The first time I ended up in a mental institution but the second time I met her father after I ate at their restaurant Joanne Trattoria. 
I don’t get a lot of coincidences anymore, and if I do I’m more prone to ignore them and find them dismissable. But the whole point of my theory is they add up to a wholistic, consistent, and systematic communication from Gaia that is more of a feeling which I’m still convinced is actually happening. I’m essentially ignoring that I think the Earth is communicating to me through telepathic randonauting and points of realizatioin.
I’ve never met Gaga but I continue to be inspired by her music. Although I still love Gaga, her art, her sound, and find her to be a great inspiration, I wouldn’t seek her out or try and date her. This is why I choose her song “bad romance” because our current only history is a one sided bad romance. I have another song called “Just Dance” inspired by Gaga that’s just about dance and steals her hook. In this song I talk about my personality in my music, it’s not an act and I make reference to Roman Atwood in the first verse who I’m a big fan of. I used them in the song because Roman and Brittany exemplify having a good relationship.
The track was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Sam Peters at La Luna Recording in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The beat is by KeyAnobeat.com and the cover art was made by ArtworkGang from Fiverr.
You can see me talk about this blog post from the last Sunday Update here:
youtube
Lyrics:
Got um goin Gaga, get on the floor and dance  Ra oo la la, I want your bad romance I said I got um goin Gaga, get on the floor and dance  Ra oo la la, I want your bad romance You know I love you so much, just wanna be with you   You know I love you so much, come on baby You know I love you so much, just wanna be with you   You know I love you so much, come on baby While you pimp’n these hoes Tryna find one to get to know Tryna be the lesson taught  And find the really special one Got um goin Gaga, get on the floor and dance  Ra oo la la, I want your bad romance Hey baby girl what you doin tonight? I like how you think, and I like your style We could go crazy, paint the town, get wild Tell me what you like baby I’ll do it for a smile
Smile more, I’ll be your Roman soldier   Bahama mama G Fuel, pop it like a soda  Shake it off, take a puff, wake’em up like Foldgers If you don’t succeed, then do it how it told ya Whatever your doin Put your mind into it Work smarter not harder Hope you find this useful  Cuz I make fly music That will guide you through it Slide in like Snoop did  And drive influence  Just want an O.G. to tell me my verse hot Better than relevant, worth a drop Illatic schematic, words like Pac  Invites me on stage, and reserves a spot Don’t got a girl, but know I would If I found her first, I’d wind up hers I wanna hug, my cosmic luve  But my life will change, like time is up cuz
You know I love you so much, just wanna be with you   You know I love you so much, come on baby You know I love you so much, just wanna be with you   You know I love you so much, (come on) come on baby While you pimp’n these hoes Tryna find one to get to know Tryna be the lesson taught  And find the really special one Got um goin Gaga, get on the floor and dance  Ra oo la la, I want your bad romance Hey baby girl what you doin tonight? I like how you think, and I like your style We could go crazy, paint the town, get wild Tell me what you like baby I’ll do it for a smile
You know what makes us different, altruism Empathy for eachother, and attitude for forgiveness  Separates us, that makes us step up We can see the future and choose to love Wield fire, build bridges, yield from the dirt Have um listen, grow the business, put in the work Join magnets, build neurons, talk to the Earth  Til my Salvador Dali world burst and give birth But The Psycho Consumption Cage Has got you trapped and you can’t escape The atmosphere a mirror room that we display And reflects the action that we engrave I wish, it would all go away, it’s to real to take So I study sociology in hopes to make a change And cosmic luve will find it’s way some day cuz 
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goboymusic · 2 years ago
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Musical artists that use #AIgenerated images for their cover art deserve to be hit by a bus.
The production process for #Mermaids was just as chaotic as “Kraken (Song 81).”
The original version of “Mermaids” was almost entirely different from what’s available today. After the original version of the song had been written, recorded and mixed, the only segment that sounded good enough to release was the “oh I think they like you” segment. Not wanting to release that segment alone because it was under a minute in length, the rest of the song was deleted and a completely new song was written around it. A week later, that new song was complete.
All in all, this fumble of producing a song, deleting a majority of it, and producing a 2nd song took about two weeks. Not bad, considering GoBoy 6 songs took twice that amount of time, even without any hiccups. On average, each GoBoy 3 song took four days to complete, GoBoy 4 songs took six days, GoBoy 5 songs took fourteen days, and GoBoy 6 songs took thirty days.
The original song title was “Sex with Mermaids.” Yeah, the daily work routine was getting to me around this time. Anything I could do creatively to add some excitement to my paper pusher life was a necessity.
This song is about a sailor introducing his comrades to a group of mermaids. These comrades understand the significance of this event, hence their willingness to travel through a raging storm. It’s quite possible that these mermaids only come to the surface during conditions that would be dangerous for humans. If it wasn’t for their sailor friend, they wouldn’t have the chance to experience such an event, as he might be the only human that these mermaids trust.
Regarding the waves and thunder sound effects: I worked as a sound designer for the film industry during the seven-year hiatus (more about the hiatus in posts 23 and 36) where I learned the utterly worthless skill of creating / manipulating sound effects. That skill was utilized in “Mermaids” (waves, thunder, creaking wooden boat, “heave ho” chant and laughing mermaids), along with other songs like “Magic Unicorn,” “Coffee Song,” “Food Song,” “Seattle,” and “Rebecca.”
Beat + bass + melody. That’s the style of GoBoy 5. While I’ve appreciated this minimalistic style for years, “Tell My Mama (Song 42)” was the first time trying it. I went whole-hog with GoBoy 5, in which most songs primarily consist of a beat, bass and melody (excerpt from post 80).
For GoBoy 5, instead of creating for the sake of creating, like I did for GoBoy 4, I wanted to make poppier songs that would appeal to a larger audience. Was that goal accomplished? Well, maybe, I guess. It resulted in the song “In Love (Song 82),” which everyone and their mother seems to like (excerpt from post 79).
GoBoy 5 ragdolled me. I remember wondering if I’d live to see the completion of the album. While the style is minimalistic, the writing and production processes were chaotic, akin to throwing darts with a blindfold on. Most songs turned into a puzzle once they reached the mixing phase, with a portion of the pieces being destined not to fit. It required constant compromising - discarding segments, restructuring, rewriting, etc. The combination of the difficult production process and temporary chaos at work left a blood-soaked trail behind me (excerpt from post 80).
In April, 2021, almost all of GoBoy 3, 4 and 5‘s songs were restructured to be under 3 minutes (preferably under 2m 30s), including this song. I became okay with releasing songs around the 2 min mark after realizing The Beatles and The Beach Boys had some songs around that length. In an attempt to increase replay value in this streaming era, most of GoBoy’s songs are now purposely around 2m 20s (excerpts from post 37).
A bass boost was added to songs 37-99 in Nov, 2021, while I was stuck at home with covid. As a result, this song feels more powerful. The bass boost isn’t a simple plugin nonchalantly added to each song. It’s a process that took about 3.5 hours per song, or one whole month to complete all songs. Admittedly, I pushed the bass boost a little too far for some of them. The bass in some songs sounds like a freaking earthquake (unnecessarily pronounced low frequencies 20 - 50 Hz). Might dial that back someday. The bass boost was also applied to every song on GoBoy 6 and beyond (excerpt from post 37).
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