#fuck it i’m gonna post about all my interests from now on

[kitten4sannie]

sleepover

pairing: perverted bsf! wooyoung x fem! reader feat. a comatose mingi (he’s asleep on the bed lmao…or is he…)

summary: wooyoung is more than willing to hold you when you’re afraid during your horror movie marathon, and even more willing to help distract you like a good friend does.

wc: 1.4k

warnings: perverted dom! wooyoung, subby innocent! reader, bro is convincing and manipulative okay, cnc/dubcon-ish vibes (if that’s not your thing feel free to skip!!), coercion/corruption, exhibitionism (all of the following is done right next to mingi), brief kissing, groping, fingering, initial orgasm denial,, tit play + spit, rough unprotected sex, creampie, this is a wild one idkidkkkkk

a/n: wooyo has been haunting my brain lately so i had no choice but to write this >~< i hope you enjoy <33 alsoo i’ll be posting one more corruption themed fic very soon that feats frat boy san and minyunhwa~

song rec: if you think i’m pretty - artemas

“I told you not to put this movie on, Woo. It’s way too scary,” you complained whinily into your best friend’s shoulder, shielding your eyes from the suspenseful scene playing out on the laptop sitting on the edge of your bed.

“Mingi was the one who wanted to watch it, you know,” Wooyoung chided, causally wrapping his arm around your shoulders, rubbing your bare arm up and down in a comforting manner.

“Well, Mingi’s passed out.” Pouting, you pointed to your other friend that was curled up underneath the comforter beside you, his eyes shut. “He’s not even watching, so what’s the point?”

Wooyoung rolled his eyes. “Come on, Y/N. Don’t be a pussy.” His cold fingers made their way down to your waist to squeeze at it, making you jump from the sudden contact. “Oh, I see….Do you think the monster’s gonna get ya?”

“Shut up, Wooyoung!” you whisper-shouted, as to not wake up Mingi. You pushed on his chest, feeling his heart beat quickly against your hand. Was it racing like yours was? And, when did he get so close to you? His hand was already running up and down the bare skin of your thigh, causing your thin shorts to ride up more and more, but you didn’t have the nerve to confront him about it. Your pout grew. “I’m really scared, okay?”

“Oh, you poor baby,” Wooyoung cooed softly into your ear, his words laced with faux pity, his sharpened gaze focused solely on your blushing face. “Do you want me to help you, Y/N? Distract you from the scary movie?”

“Y-yes, please…”

You didn’t know what you were getting into, but you trusted that Wooyoung had your best interest in mind. It was then that he gently coaxed you further into his arms, lying comfortably against him as you faced the laptop screen once again. Goosebumps began to spread across your limbs from underneath the warm comforter, but it wasn’t from the frightening movie — it was from Wooyoung’s hand slipping underneath your shorts, his slender fingers rubbing at your pulsing cunt through your panties.

“W-Wooyoung…” you croaked weakly, your face and body growing so hot, you could pass out. Friends didn’t do this sort of thing, did they?

“Shhhh, baby, just look at the screen…yeah, just like that…” he sighed softly, his warm breath fanning over your neck, now concentrating on the way your tank top clung to your softness of your tits, how your nipples grew hard enough to poke through the thin material, groaning when he found your clit through your panties, rubbing at it in slow, small circles.

“B-but we’re friends, Woo…” You made a sad attempt at pushing his hand away, the moral debate you were having internally slowly fizzling away the longer Wooyoung touched you.

“Isn’t this what friends are for?” Wooyoung persisted, pulling your panties to the side just in time for his fingers to dip in between your soaked folds. “And, fuck, you’re so wet right now, Y/N. It feels good, doesn’t it? What’s so wrong with that, baby?”

“But, nnngh…Mingi’s right next to us…” You began to melt into Wooyoung’s arms and the soft mattress below you, unable to resist spreading your legs out for him, your thigh even resting against Mingi’s, not noticing when it shifted just as two of Wooyoung’s digits slipped inside you.

Licking at his lips, Wooyoung then pressed them onto your cheek, egging you on in a low voice, “Then, tell me to stop, baby.” He began to fuck his fingers into you at a fast pace, your walls clenching around them. “Right now. Say it.” Now, he was relentlessly rubbing his thumb into your clit with his free hand, still working your cunt, hooking his digits against the spot that made you spasm, your body growing warmer and heavier. When you pouted up at him and whined, he simply mirrored your helpless expression. “What’s the matter, baby? Hm?”

“Oh– fuck, right there…” you moaned out, not even attempting to look at the laptop screen in front of you, instead solely focused on your best friend beside you, so desperate to cum, you began to roll your hips down every time his fingers plunged into you.

“Yeah? You’re feeling really good now, aren’t you, Y/N? Now that you’re nice and full? Just look at you, baby…You can’t help but fuck yourself dumb on my fingers, huh?” Wooyoung looked like the monster from the movie now, eyes full of hunger, like he was ready to eat you up.

“Uh-huh, uh-huhhh…” Just as your sounds of pleasure began to crescendo, your mind growing cloudier by the second, pulling at the sheets below you because you were right there, Wooyoung ceased his movement completely, leaving you high and dry. “No, please, don’t stop, please…!”

Wooyoung gave you a look of indifference, much like a cat that suddenly wasn’t interested in playtime anymore. “Show me your tits. Maybe then I’ll make you cum.”

Desperate for your best friend’s attention and touch, you slowly rolled your tank top up until your tits spilled out, tears pricking at your eyes. How did you get here? Why did Wooyoung’s deliciously dark gaze successfully distract you from the paralyzing shame you felt? Or is that what made you wet? The way you were slutting yourself out for your best friend while the other was sleeping right next to you? “Please make me cum, Y-Youngie…”

“Fuck, you’re so cute, come here.” Now, Wooyoung was on top of you, leaving as much of his saliva on your tits as possible, squeezing one when he was noisily sucking on the other, his dilated eyes never leaving your teary ones. “Can I fuck you, Y/N? I’ll make you cum, I promise…I need to be inside you, baby, please, you’re so fucking hot…” Desperate for release, Wooyoung lowered his sweatpants until his heavy cock dropped onto your bare cunt, rubbing himself along it, making your mind grow that much more empty. “Just the tip, okay? That’s okay, yeah?”

Before you knew it, you were nodding, and just like that, he was inside you, your best friend, using you like a cocksleeve. Wooyoung was ramming his cock into your cunt like he was trying to knock you up. “That’s a good slut, fuckkk, taking me so well…” You tried to moan, to speak, to say anything, but you couldn’t, not with the way his tongue suddenly went down your throat.

All you could do was cling onto Wooyoung, your nails digging into his skin when it felt like the tip of his cock was pounding into your cervix, almost growing dizzy. When you heard your best friend groaning about how he was getting ready to fuck you full of his cum, you gasped, unable to talk, short, broken moans being punched out of you each time Wooyoung slammed himself into you, your thighs hooking around his waist once his hot load began to pour into you. It was then that you turned your head just in time to realize Mingi was watching you intently, his plush lips parted just enough to let drool slip past, catching onto the way that something was moving rapidly underneath the comforter somewhere near his abdomen.

“Told you she would put out, didn’t I, Min?” Wooyoung mused smugly, fucking you through the orgasm that tore through your used body, using your bruised hips like handlebars as he did so.

“You were so right, Woo, so, so right,” Mingi sighed out, tossing his head back into the pillow behind him, leaving a few watery cumshots on the inside of your comforter and his hand.

You didn’t know if you wanted to cry or to cum again, instead just trying to catch your breath, hiding your face underneath one of your wrists, at least until Wooyoung pulled it down and made you look at the both of them.

“You’ll let Mingi have a turn, won’t you, Y/N? It’s only fair, right?”

Mingi nodded in agreement, before leaning in, licking across his teeth. “Having my cock inside your little used cunt next will make another good ‘distraction’, don’t you think?”

Even though the credits were rolling on the laptop behind them, the monsters hadn’t left. They were right there in front of you, waiting for your permission to ravage you. You couldn’t help but nod. They were your best friends, after all.

Apply for the taglist here ⇢ ♡

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© kitten4sannie, 2024.

[sharlsworld]

⋆⭒˚.⋆ i go lower - ʟɴ4 ☆

✿ lando norris x influencer reader + ex bf charles & ex best friend alexandra

✿ charles leclerc just keeps proving how much of a red flag he is

ᵃᵘᵗʰᵒʳˢ ⁿᵒᵗᵉ ୨୧ this is actually bad, i kept losing motivation so i just wanted to end it i’m so sorry

🝮

🝮

two days after the monaco gp

f1wags

liked by landonorris and 29,617 others

f1wags charles with a mystery girl in monaco last night! trouble in paradise?

lordperceval that ain’t no mystery girl 😭

sharls_lerklerk thats alexandra saint mleux she’s y/n’s ex best friend

⤷ lady.georgerussell why’d they stop being friends?

⤷ sharls_lerklerk she got with her ex boyfriend before charles 😭

⤷ lady.georgerussell63 SHUT UP 😭

estiebestie charles red flag leclerc back at it again

ethereal.yn bop

tripod.gasly bro invented homie hopping

all4lando why is no one gonna talk about lando liking this post?

sharls.eclair bro got p1 his home race and don’t know how to act anymore 💀

♥︎ by landonorris

dannyric.canlickle LANDO??!

🝮

ihateyn removed charles_leclerc and ynsbiggestfan as a follower

ihateyn unfollowed charles_leclerc and ynsbiggestfan

ihateyn

liked by lewishamilton and 92 others

ihateyn what the fuck i just woke up from my nap to my boyfriend out on a date with my ex best friend???

oscarpiastri I hate whores

francisca.cgomes i will cut his brakes

georgerussell63 Please dont cry queen I’ll run him off the track don’t worry

landonorris stand up

⤷ ihateyn i’m up

carlossainz55 Just say the word and I’ll make sure he’s never able to drive ever again I have nothing left to lose

lilymhe don’t be a little bitch

⤷ ihateyn you right you right

maxverstappen1 I’ll cut his dick off

sabrinacarpenter girl just tell me what to say and i’ll sing it for you dw

🝮

yn

liked by charlottesiine and 1,912,542 others

yn all in my lonesome

francisca.cgomes he who shall not be named better sleep with one eye open

lorenzotl Je t'aime petite soeur ❤️

⤷ yn i love you too enzo 🤍

⤷ sharlsworld “i love you little sister”

lilymhe once i get my hands on him it’s over for him

lewishamilton Chin up girl, You’ll be alright. sending all my love ♥️

⤷ roscoelovescoco yes’s we love’s you’s!

⤷ yn i love you two 🥹🥹♥️

arthur_leclerc i love you forever sista, my day 1 😇😇

⤷ yn my partner in crime always 🤞🏽

joris__trouche Been quiet since you left

⤷ yn come over whenever you want, you’re always welcome joris 🫶🏽

⤷ sharls_leclercussy gasping for air rn

chillinlikechili charlotte liked??

leclerc_pascale Ne sois pas triste, le soleil brillera à nouveau. Je t'aime pour toujours, viens bientôt tu me manques ♥️🥰

⤷ yn je serai bientôt fini maman je t'aime

⤷ sharlsworld pascale said “don’t be sad, the sun will shine again. i love you forever, come over soon i miss you” y/n said “i’ll be over soon mom i love you”

charleslovesyn ok but joris’ comment? my soul is weeping right now

🝮

yn

liked by danielricciardo and 3,082,561 others

yn 💌💐🎀🪩

landonorris who’s that handsome lad in the last slide? 😍

⤷ yn some bum i picked up on the side of the road

⤷ landonorris he looks absolutely yummy is he single 😈

⤷ yn get outta my comment section

leclerc_pascale Ma jolie fille! Tu me manques, douce fille 🤍🤍🤍

⤷ yn tu me manques aussi maman 💗

⤷ sharlsworld pascale said “my beautiful daughter! i miss you sweet girl” y/n said “i miss you too mom”

⤷ lovely_leclerc she’s literally the daughter she never had i’m sobbing 😭

alex_albon return him this instant

⤷ yn nahhhh

georgerussell63 Hmm interesting…

⤷ carmenmmundt Very interesting

landonorizz HELLLURRR WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE LAST SLIDE??

iactuallyhateyn moving on already?

⤷ yn can i not have guy friends?

lilymhe healing era rn revenge era coming soon trust guys 🥰

⤷ yn 😉

charlesismyman69 home hopping is crazy poor charles i hope he’s ok

⤷ landonorris yeah poor charles i wonder how he’s feeling after cheating on his girlfriend of 4 years with her ex best friend

⤷ oscarpiastri clocked him 🤣🤣

🝮

charles_leclerc

liked by arthur_leclerc and 682,143 others

charles_leclerc Yawn

alexandrasaintmleux 😍😍😍

⤷ forzacharles GIRL

oscarpiastri get out my face bro 💀💀 this is so embarrassing and bad for your image how do you sleep at night

⤷ charles_leclerc very good beside the love of my life. now run along with your master you little lap dog

⤷ oscarpiastri cmon we all know you wish you were still her little lap dog 😂 and is she really the love of your life or the only girl around with no self respect??

⤷ mclaren Oscar please don’t make us take your social media away

landonorris oh that not-

maxverstappen1 Brotha eughh

lilymhe downfall era 💀🔥

⤷ hoeforsainzzz lily muni he & oscar piastri y/n defenders & charles haters: confirmed

♥︎ by lilymhe and oscarpiastri

estiebestie actually his downfall era though

lady.georgerussell erm what the sigma

carlando this should’ve stayed in the drafts

alex_albon this…not fye.

comments have been disabled

🝮

yn

liked by schecoperez and 5,592,781 others

yn life lately 🍉

leclerc_pascale My girl!! You’re like a breath of fresh air for my soul 🤍🤍

⤷ yn you always light up my day maman 🤍

♥︎ by leclerc_pascale

arthur_leclerc i totally won the diving contest idc what everyone else says

⤷ lorenzotl No I definitely did

⤷ yn you two basically belly flopped i won

scuderiaferrari We miss our girl! ❤️

♥︎ by author

charlottesiine cutie pie 😉😘🥰😍

⤷ yn your the reason why 🙂‍↔️

♥︎ by charlottesiine

landonorris fucked that pasta up

⤷ yn no sauce was detected on that plate after lunch

francisca.cgomes living for this

georgerussell63 I fear you won

⤷ yn 🥇🥇

forzacharles SCREAMING RIGHT NOW WHAT IS GOING ON

estiebestie pascale? arthur? lorenzo? charlotte? i’m deceased

carlossainzappendix she’s winning in life

🝮

yn

liked by danielricciardo and 11,017,535 others

yn worth the wait

landonorris i’d wait a million years for you

⤷ yn you’re to sweet to me

lilymhe this is the revenge era

maxverstappen1 That’s my favorite couple

francisca.cgomes WOOOOOO

leclerc_pascale My daughter deserves all the good in life 🥰 I love you my girl ❤️

⤷ yn i love you maman 💗

arthur_leclerc ❤️❤️

oscarpiastri Now I gotta deal with all the lovely dovey stuff

⤷ yn don’t act like your not happy about this

lewishamilton What did I say? Everything would be alright ❤️

⤷ yn so wise

lorenzotl My little star, you deserve all the love in the world 🌟💛

⤷ yn don’t make me cry enzo

joris__trouche 🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽

charlottesiine so happy for you pretty 💘

♥︎ by author

🝮

landonorris

liked by maxfewtrell and 8,719,932 others

landonorris i’ll find you in every lifetime

yn nothing can keep us apart

⤷ landonorris nothing at all

francisca.cgomes are we surprised? no

danielricciardo Tone down the pda in the paddock plz 🙏🏽

⤷ landonorris nah fam

carmenmmundt Awhh so happy for you two

⤷ yn marry me carmen

⤷ carmenmmundt I’ll meet you at the altar

⤷ landonorris i just got her and your already taking her away from me 💔

pierregasly Hittin the clubs tonight

lilymhe shoutout to those un loyal bitches!!

alex_albon george owes me 200 bucks

⤷ georgerussell63 Whatever

⤷ yn uh what

⤷ alex_albon i said his post would be more sappy then yours

⤷ landonorris i hate you both

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Disenshittify or Die”

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

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

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

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

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

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

I’m talking about enshittification.

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

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

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

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

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

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

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

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

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

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

Think Different, amirite?

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

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

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

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

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

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

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

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

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

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

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

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

[Any guesses?!]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mean, you love to see it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except you can’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So companies aren’t constrained by competition or regulation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Any guesses why?]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To do that, we have to install constraints.

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

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

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

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

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

[Can anyone guess why?]

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

So yeah, that was pretty fucking epic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up: regulation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

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

@fak3r@mastodon.social (cropped)

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

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

[p1utofairy]

★ your next glow up?

note — i wasn't gonna post this now but i figured fuck it why not?! enjoy, my loves! this is for entertainment purposes only <3 take what resonates and leave what doesn’t. p.s. come in my ask box and tell me what you think!

PILE ONE.

pile mf ONE, you are really stepping into a new era! when i tell you this new you is gonna turn HEADS. tuh, you’re gonna be looking like new money. nicki minaj’s ‘new body’ verse is coming to mind lol “you ain’t fuck me, you fucked the old body. you ain’t fuck nicki, you fucked nicole body! ain’t no miles on this here new body, off with they heads these bitches is nobody’s.” OH YEAH OKAYYY, PILE 1. maybe you’ll be hitting the gym more, switching up your diet or possibly getting some cosmetic work done?

whatever you’re doing differently, it’s gonna be noticeable. people are gonna feel like something changed with you overnight like “um when did pile 1 get so bad?” and this isn’t to say you aren’t already attractive…there’s just something about your energy and confidence that just amplified x1000 and people are really gonna feel and see this change in you. you might start experimenting with your outfits a little more, giving off a more seductive vibe. it’s like you're breaking out of your comfort zone especially if you usually opt for baggier clothes or a more conservative look. wait cause why am i thinking of ‘pretty little liars’ when emily is talking to aria about hanna and she’s like “haven’t you heard? she’s the it girl now.” PERIOD, PILE ONE. giving serena page vibes from love island.

there will be a lot of talk about you and even if you don’t hear it directly, trust me, people are gonna try to keep tabs on you. i’m seeing people re-watch your instagram stories tryna figure out who took you that place and who you’re doing it with — oh these people are spiralingggg. this could very well be potential suitors tryna scope out the scenery, but they’re not sure if you’ll be interested in them. they might fear rejection because you just look so damn good and it looks like you’re in such a better space in life and got your shit together; whereas they feel like they lack the resources/finances to be with you. these potential love interests see you as high value, pile 1. they’re intimidated by your beauty and aura. you’ll be more so focused on attracting a partner that can actually make shit happen.

you don’t have time for the cat and mouse games. you want the real deal and i do see you getting the person that you want. you manifested this person into your life and i sense them feeling like they won the lottery with you! i’m hearing that you are sooo mesmerizing on the outside and your heart & personality makes you so much more beautiful. there’s layers to you and i think this next glow up will allow you to really shine and be yourself unapologetically – you’re leaning into the different aspects of yourself that makes you unique. if there’s anything you’ve got your mind set on or something specific you want to do, go for it! whatever you do, you’ll stand out effortlessly and be successful. say yes by floetry is coming to mind. “see, i’ve been watching you for awhile…your smile and style. wanna know if i can be with you for the night, alright.” i meannnnn need i say more?!

how to tap into this energy?

listen closely to your intuition! work on your third eye because i’m hearing that you’re a powerful manifester and you don’t even truly know it. even if you do know this, you start doubting yourself and limiting your own thoughts. always think big and bigger because it’s in your reach. don’t get so caught up in the “how?” because your manifestations can appear in many different ways, not just one. you have a clear vision into the future – you just gotta adjust your lens and focus on what it is that YOU want. who cares if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else, as along as you see the vision then it’s a go! listen to ‘i want it all’ by sharpay evans lol you need to embody that song and its energy.

PILE TWO.

hey, pile 2! i’m hearing you’ve been putting up with the bullshit for wayyyy too long and this next glow up is gonna be a proper FUCK YOU to all your haters! i feel like people take your kindness for weakness and you feel like you don’t get the respect you deserve. you can deal with a lot of passive aggression in your relationships or friendships and people expect for you to suck it up and be okay with it. what i’m mainly picking up is that you like to keep the peace. you don’t want to ruffle anyone’s feather, but it just makes it worse for you because you’re not truly expressing yourself and your emotions. this keeps you up at night like “ugh! i should’ve said this or I should’ve stuck up for myself and finally cussed so and so tf out.” but you don’t because you know why, pile 2? you’re better than them, simple as that.

you wouldn’t treat anybody how some people treat you, and the reality is that it’s so much harder to be nice than it is to be mean. anybody can be mean and say hurtful shit if they really wanted to, but to always be graceful and kind in the face of adversity and ignorance? rare af. +10000 aura points! don’t let anybody make you feel less than or like you can’t speak up for yourself. this next glow up you’re going to use your voice and really make it known that you are not to be fucked with, okay?! you will be standing your ground and really popping your shit in the most calm and collected way possible & people are gonna be like “wait…did [y/n] really just clock me like that?!” and you’re gonna be standing 10 toes down on it as you should. they’ll have no choice but to respect you lol. you will start to realize what is worth your time & energy and what isn’t.

you might start cutting off people that don’t mean you any good and really start to focus on yourself and your energy. no more walking on egg shells and sparing peoples feelings, this is YOUR life and you have a voice just as much as they do – so use it! i think you’ll also be meeting new friends & a potential love interest during this next glow up. i’m hearing ‘how stella got her groove back’ lol so yeah some of you might be playing the field a little bit.

some of you might just want something casual and nothing more because you just want to focus on your own healing journey. you’ll start to understand why things had to happen the way that they did & why certain relationships didn’t work out the way that you thought they would. you’ll be able to decipher what you are and aren’t willing to put up with and honestly i just see you bossing tf up and advocating for yourself no matter who doesn’t like it. that tiktok “nobody loves you baby! you should only love yourself – ON MY SOUL!” just randomly came to me lmfaooo this is your ‘i’m focusing on what really matters aka me’ era and i think it’s exactly what you need pile 2.

how to tap into this energy?

i think you need to transmute the negative energy that people try to project on you into something positive. 12:12 on the clock, yeah. like look at this way, if people doubt you, don’t respect you or don’t feel like your capable of achieving great things then use that to your advantage. let them underestimate you all they want, and then BAM boss up on them and show them who tf you are. what they don’t know only makes you stronger. you have the power to make some powerful ass connections and make a name for yourself so be calculated & strategic with your moves. people will be eating their words when it comes to you, pile 2.

PILE THREE.

pile 3 your next glow up is gonna be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ngl, but very rewarding nonetheless. i’m hearing that one tiktok sound “you gotta take the good with the bad, smile with the sad. love what you got and remember what you had.” so yeah i think you’re really gonna be figuring out how to transmute your energy and create something from it – whether that be a job opportunity, a love offer, a trip, etc. there’s something that you really want and you’re doing the work to make it happen. you have the plan, you just need the platform lol.

for some of you, i see a major relationship coming to an end. this could be a lover or a best friend, but this person will be exposed because they’re not who you thought they were. this person has very sneaky/deceptive energy and you’ve been in the dark about this for way too long. this person/connection means a lot to you, so you will feel like this is a tough situation to completely walk away from; but my sweet pile 3’s you will be more than okay! you will be spectacular! 10:10 was just on the clock.

allow yourself to sort through your emotions and learn from the situation, don’t let it weigh you down. sometimes we get too caught up in how long we’ve been with somebody and all of the good memories we made with them, that makes us hesitant to move on. sometimes things just run its course and you’re no longer in alignment with that person. you can’t force anything or anyone in your life that doesn’t align with your highest self and that can be very hard to process when emotions are involved but i’m happy to let you know there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

i see some of you traveling to a place you’ve always wanted to go and possibly meeting a potential love interest. in this next glow up, you’ll be doing things that you’ve always wanted to do cause there’s no one holding you back. you’re stepping out of your comfort zone and just taking a leap of faith – high risk, high reward. you’re gonna be making time for yourself and also prioritizing your hobbies/interests. this is beautiful, pile 3. i see you really getting in touch with who you are at the core. be kind and gentle with yourself, because you are a precious gem that a lot of people value and care about.

how to tap into this energy?

stop giving your power away. work on your throat chakra, my loves. your voice is your power and it’s one of the major keys to your success. a closed mouth doesn’t get fed, so you need to speak up and communicate what it is that YOU want and not just say what people want to hear. this next glow up will really have you standing in your power. release is needed especially verbally cause you know that tight feeling you get in your throat when you’re tryna stop yourself from crying? yeah no more of that. no more walking on egg shells, pile 3. say what you feel and stand on it & watch how the tides turn in your favor. mwah!

PILE FOUR.

alright, pile 4! for this next glow up i see you moving. some of you might actually be moving into a new home or apartment and it’s gonna grant you so much peace and comfort. for others of you, this could be you moving on emotionally from a toxic relationship and/or familial bond and finally getting the clarity and peace you need to cut all ties and move onto something better. whatever the situation may be, it was weighing heavy on you and making you feel very down.

you’re gonna feel so free when you leave this situation behind, it’s not even funny. i’m hearing that you were a gilded bird in a cage. some of you could’ve been moving from place to place, not feeling quite settled or financially stable. if you feel lost right now and like you don’t know what to do with your life/where it’s taking you, i just wanna say keep going – W.A.Y.S. by jhené aiko is coming to mind. “if there's one thing that i learned while in those county lines, is that everything takes time. you have gotta lose your pride, you have gotta lose your mind just to find your peace of mind.” awww yeah that’s your theme song for this next glow up. things might not make sense right now, but please trust me when i say that everything is going to work out in your favor & things will be better than you could ever imagine.

you will be blessed with the tools you need to get to this next phase of your life. you are the source, pile 4. whatever you put your mind to, you can surely achieve! don’t let 3D circumstances throw you off, you are so abundant and prosperous you will see in this next glow up just how much of a powerful manifester you really are. you’re still trying to find yourself and figure out where you fit in in the world, but you don’t have to put yourself in a box, pile 4. pave your own way and once you do others will want to follow suit. no one can see your future the way that you do, so keep doing your thing because i’m seeing that you will come across people/friends that share similar interests and niches as you. awww pile 4 you’re going to find your soul tribe.

you have this flighty energy about you (air sign energy/esp gemini) like you’re from one thing to the next and you can’t figure out what you truly want to do. some of you might be in college or almost about to graduate and when people ask you “do you know what you want to do?” you’re like uhhhh….]>|>]^>.]€]€]£ like you truly don’t know but like that’s okay cause actually you do know! on a soul level, you know. what’s understood doesn’t have to be explained pile 4 lol people might not get it now but when you pop out living the life you’ve always dreamed of, TUH. they’ll understand then.

how to tap into this energy?

get out of your head so much and just vibe, pile 4. you can plan plan plan all you want but the reality is: shit happens! it might annoy you or make you feel incredibly frustrated when another problem or inconvenience pops up in your life, but there’s nothing you can’t overcome. it’s life. you will be greatful for these experiences in the long run because it will be another bridge that you’ve already crossed and dealt with, so you won’t fold under pressure – you’ll just already know what to do. you got this, pile 4. shit is about to get really good for you.

[msbigredmachine]

Kitty Kat (Roman Reigns)

After a lifetime of searching, the Tribal Chief may have finally found the woman of his dreams. Post Summerslam 2024.

Warnings: SMUT (yes i know its excessive im sorry 😭)

Word Count: 5.3k

A/N: This got way too long bc I talk too much. I tried to shorten it I promise but I just couldn't. I do hope you like it either way...

Song inspiration: Again - Lenny Kravitz

Credit to the owners of the pics and gifs

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

He could get used to this.

As he stepped off the plane, Joe discreetly adjusted the bulge in his pants and exhaled deeply, allowing himself a giddy smile in anticipation for what was to come. 

He couldn’t wait to see her again. His Kitty Kat. The interesting part was that this time, she’d flown him out to come spend the week with her, in First Class, no less. “It’s a five-hour flight from Cleveland to L.A., so I want you to be as comfortable as possible, Daddy,” she’d told him. Never in his wildest dreams did he envision being ‘flewed out’. He’d been the one flying her out in his private jet, chartering luxury vehicles to bring her to him. The reverse felt strange and would take some getting used to, but it did feel nice to be pampered and taken care of for once.

Seated comfortably in the back of the Cadillac Escalade driving him through the City of Angels, he reminisced about last night in Cleveland. It was fun to hear the crowd again, the adrenaline rush of his entrance music blaring all around the Browns Stadium. It was a long absence from wrestling for him, darkened by the passing of his father, followed by the whirlwind preparation and execution of his funeral, grand, exhausting and emotional. Kat being by his side for all of it was a precious elixir he could never repay her for, but perhaps he could start tonight.

His thoughts were interrupted by his phone ringing. It was an unknown number, but against his better judgment, he answered and hoped it wasn’t some weirdo fan. “Hello?”

“You left town without telling me? I saw you all over Summerslam last night!” the shrill, familiar voice responded.

Scratch that. Now he wished it was a fan. “I know I blocked your ass. This is stalking,” was his cold greeting. 

“I just want us to talk, Joe! We can’t just end things the way we did!”

“Ain’t nothin’ to talk about, Ebony. I got the DNA test I wanted. Go find your baby daddy and leave me the fuck alone.”

“Are you ever gonna forgive me? I made a mistake!” Ebony pleaded. “You didn’t even invite me to Sika’s funeral. That hurt my feelings, Joe.”

“Bitch, don’t piss me off!” Joe countered angrily. “Blurting out that I’m not Josiah’s daddy was not a mistake! I also found the messages in your phone, remember? You and your little group chat laughed at me, laughed about me raising a kid that ain't mine!”

“That’s a female ass trait, y’know, lookin’ through my phone and invading my privacy!” Ebony complained.

“You can invade these nuts,” Joe dismissed, “You cheated on me and lied about the paternity of your son! That’s enough for me to wash my hands off of you and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

For a second, Ebony was quiet. Then, “Let me guess. You’re with that uppity rich bitch. She was at your dad’s funeral, both of y'all looked so cozy in the videos. She's the reason you don’t wanna work things out, right? Weren’t you seeing her before we broke up? Who’s the cheater now, huh?”

Joe scoffed in disbelief. After all she’d done to make his life a living hell, she was still gaslighting him. “We were over long before I started seeing her. I only hung around cuz I thought the kid you were carrying was mine. Don’t act like your whorish toxic ways didn’t drive me into her arms in the first place! You broke us up, so I’ve moved on from your evil ass. Simple.”

Ebony kissed her teeth. “You are so disrespectful to me, always have been. You never cared about me. It was all about your fucking wrestling. You were always gone! I was lonely! I needed you and you didn't give a shit!”

“So that’s why you opened your legs for some bum, got knocked up, and lied that I was the father? You disrespected yourself!” He felt himself getting riled up and had to compose himself. He would not let his ex ruin his day. “Imma make this clear so even you can understand. We. Are. Done. Call me again and it’s my attorney you’ll be talking to.” Cutting off the call, he then blocked the number and deleted it for added measure.

Fuck that ho.

Anyway, back to his girl, Kat. It had been an amazing few months so far with her. Of course, he’d googled her in the beginning, asked Heyman to run a background check to make sure she was legit and not a psychopath like his ex. Katrina Sullivan was one of the most famous music producers in the world and the top executive at her renowned publishing label. She was a big time player in her industry just like he was, a star in her own right, and it was a match made in Heaven.

Not only was she incredibly beautiful, but sex with her was a wild ride. She gave him a run for his money whenever they fucked. She was all about new experiences and wasn’t too prissy to fuck inside a car or suck him off outside a dive bar. He blushed every time he remembered the freaky shit they got up to after his loss at Wrestlemania. Long story short, she made him feel much better about dropping the belt. He loved that she loved sex as much as he did, and if he wasn’t hooked on her before, he was completely addicted after that night. 

And it wasn’t all about the physical. There was an emotional bond they shared, a connection that he’d never felt with anyone else before her. Talking with her felt like talking with a friend. He would unload his good days and bad days on her and she would listen to all of it without passing judgment. He did the same for her and was proud to be the one she learned to trust after her own past heartbreaks. Joe wished he’d had the courage to leave Ebony earlier. Perhaps he would have found the woman who had become his peace, his safe haven, and closed the hole in his heart much, much sooner.

A Google Map search helped him find the best florist in town. The ladies in the shop ooh'ed and ahh'ed over the beautiful bouquet of roses he bought and how lucky his lady was. But he thought he was the lucky one. As he took a deep breath and inhaled the flowers, he felt his stomach flutter at the thought of her beautiful face, her smile, her warm embrace. Joe knew he was in love, but he didn’t quite know how to tell her yet. It was weird enough that he lowkey felt like a thot being flown out. He really didn’t mind, though. All he wanted was to be with her and just be in her presence, in her aura. He would tell her when he was ready.

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

Kat’s mansion was the stuff of dreams. Isolated on the hills of the Pacific Palisades overlooking lush Californian greenery, it was one of her rewards as the most in-demand producer in music today. The living room segued into the kitchen, which welcomed him with the smell of freshly cooked food. Pasted to her stainless steel refrigerator by a small circular ‘Acknowledge Me’ magnet, was a note from her saying that she’d just headed out for a last-minute meeting and directed him to the oven where a warm skillet of sirloin steak and seasoned roasted potatoes waited for him. She had also stocked her fridge with his Megafit meals along with C4 Energy drinks and a few bottles of her own branded tequila. His baby was spoiling him rotten and he was digging it.

He first put the fresh flowers in a vase he filled with water before settling down to eat. He wished she was here with him, but he understood more than anyone how busy things could be when you were at the top of your game. He was proud of her and wanted her to get all the coins she deserved. Halfway through his meal, he pulled out his phone and checked on her.

After dinner, he embarked on a little tour around her breathtaking abode which ended up taking several minutes to complete. Joe had some nice homes of his own around the globe, but this floored them all. The edifice dripped with luxury and was crafted to perfection, just like his Kitty Kat was. He enjoyed the gorgeous city view from her balcony as he sipped on some tequila. Her bathroom was spacious and had a waterfall shower that he luxuriated in when he stepped inside. One side of her walk-in wardrobe was lined with an assortment of brand new t-shirts, pants and dress shirts all for him. Of course she knew his size; she’d ripped his clothing off of him on many occasions. His stomach was doing flips as the time continued to tick by. It was hilarious that the big bad Tribal Chief was acting all giddy at the mere thought of a woman, but here he was, entangled in her expensive satin sheets, counting down the minutes until she was back in his arms.

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

The sound of running water jerked him awake. The plane ride must have worn him out more than he thought; he didn’t even realize when he fell asleep. The sky outside was now pitch black but the bathroom lights were switched on. As he sat upright in the bed, something rolled down his bare chest and onto his lap. He looked down and his breath hitched. A sheer, baby pink-colored thong, just removed. Unable to resist, he held it up to his nose and shivered as her sensual aroma filled his nostrils and sent all his blood rushing south. With newfound enthusiasm, he climbed out of the bed and padded over to the bathroom. 

Katrina’s back was turned to him, standing over the tub as she drained the bath. Draped in a fluffy lilac bathrobe that barely covered her backside as she bent over, Joe chose to stand there and admire her, letting his eyes follow the rivulets of water that trickled down her long shapely legs. He trailed his gaze along the backs of her knees and her oh-so-sexy thighs, stopping at her luscious derrière where he found her pussy lips, slick and glistening, winking at him. He groaned out loud at the sight, feeling his bulge stir in his drawstring shorts.

Alerted by the noise he made, Kat spun around and sighed. "Oh, damn," she frowned and bounced her fist against her thigh.

Joe raised an eyebrow at her reaction. “Did I frighten you?”

“Not really. I wanted to wake you up by sucking your dick.” 

Chuckling heartily, he stepped closer. "You still can, baby. Don’t let me stop you,” he said, sealing their lips together in a kiss he’d been thinking about for weeks. He held her tight, molding their bodies together as time seemed to stop all around them. The anticipation had been building all day and just this moment alone was worth the long wait.  

Joe sighed happily against her lips, his fingers massaging the back of her neck. “Mmm, I can tell you missed me. Did you miss me, baby?”

“You know I did, Daddy,” she whispered back. It had been months in the making, but Kat was thrilled that he was finally here in her humble abode. She pulled back to regard him, marveling at the sheer height and width of him, his bare, broad chest showcasing that beautiful tattoo and all those muscles. Fuck, he was so hot. “I saw the roses in the kitchen, they’re beautiful,” she said.

“Not as beautiful as you are, baby,” Joe answered, brushing his thumb along her bottom lip. “How was your meeting?”

Kat huffed and rolled her eyes. “Waste of my time. Don’t really wanna talk about it,” she added, changing the topic to a more exciting one. “You looked so good last night, babe. I could see how happy you were to be back.”

“I was,” he admitted, his light brown eyes lighting up. “Bro, hearing the fans go bananas when my music hit was insane. And all those fingers in the air, too. Four years of bustin' my ass finally paying off.”

“Huh. I had one finger out too, but it wasn’t in the air, and I was layin’ in bed. Naked,” Kat teased, fluttering her long eyelashes at him.

The thought of her writhing around in bed aroused by his show of violence caused another tightening in his shorts. With a growl in his voice, he responded, "Show me." 

“Wait.” She put up one hand before he could grab her. “Before we get started…I never got to ask you because we were so busy with the funeral…But did you take the DNA test?” she asked, watching with dismay as his face fell. He looked away with a heavy sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose, something she learned he did when he was reeling in his emotions. 

“Yeah. Josiah’s not mine,” he replied sadly.

Two distinct emotions of her own rushed through Kat at this news. Relief, that he was no longer tied to Ebony and he could now, finally, move on with his life. Move on with her. Disappointment, on his behalf, knowing that he had enjoyed getting to know the baby boy he’d thought was his child. “I’m so sorry,” was all she could muster.

“Don’t be. At least I know the truth now. I care about the kid, but he’s not my responsibility any more,” he choked out, the sting of losing that sweet little boy still raw and painful.

“Oh, baby.” Kat rubbed her hands up and down his broad back to soothe him. She regretted downing the mood and sought to fix it. “What can I do?” 

Joe shook his head and sank into her embrace. “Just be with me, like this. I wanna be with you. Thank you for bringing me out here, it’s exactly what I needed.”

“Of course. You know I gotchu,” she assured him, butterflies sprouting inside her belly as he dropped feather-light kisses on her neck, trailing along her shoulder which was soon bare as he slipped off her robe and dropped it to the floor. She tugged down his shorts and her hungry gaze zeroed in on that other part of him that she missed. All those FaceTime calls and selfies did very little justice to the real thing. This was his first time on her turf, and she was determined to use this week wisely, especially as this extended period didn’t quite exist before. 

In the beginning, their meetings were brief and eventful, a couple of hours’ escape from the madness going on in their individual lives. Meet up, scorch the sheets, and wake to the sound of the rustle of clothes pulled from the floor, the sharp zipping of bags, quick kisses goodbye followed by the front door quietly clicking open and shut. At each other’s mercy at sunset then disappearing before dawn to resume reality. It was a thrill at first but as time passed, Kat realized she wanted more with him. She wanted to begin and end her days in his sturdy arms. Wanted them to shower together, to eat together and spend much more time together. Simply put, she wanted to be a real couple, and she was ecstatic when he confessed that he wanted the same. Coming to L.A. was a great start and it excited Kat to no end.

Hand in hand, they walked together, naked, out of the bathroom. She giggled as he followed closely behind her, kissing her neck and touching her body along the way. As they reached the bed, Joe noticed the bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket full of ice on the nightstand. Kat read his mind. “Just a lil’ sumn to celebrate your arrival,” she clarified, as he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her to stand between his legs. His gaze was soft, yet beautifully intense as he ran his hands up her thighs and her hips, cupping her backside and bringing her even closer to him. He pressed his lips to her stomach, adorning her belly with gentle, open-mouthed kisses that felt so good she moaned pleasurably in approval.

“I’m in love with you,” he whispered against her brown skin, his voice clear yet filled with a vulnerability he’d never felt before.

Kat smiled down at him. “Took you long enough. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“For real?” His heart pounding so hard in his chest he was sure she could hear it.

Her smile widened as she loosened his ponytail, letting the long dark locks fall and frame his breathtaking features like the angel he was. Her angel. “Yeah. I mean…After everything we’ve shared, after getting to know the beautiful person that you are, of course I’m in love with you too.”

They were words he’d been hoping to hear from her for a while now, and now that he had, he was robbed of every sensation other than joy and peace and the burning need to make love to her nonstop for the rest of his stay in the West Coast. “You’re beautiful too, baby girl,” he rasped, drawing her back in, “So fuckin’ beautiful…”

They clung to each other, making out with increasing passion, both of them extremely aroused and more desperate than ever in the wake of this wonderful revelation. As they kissed, he slipped one hand over her breast, kneading gently, eliciting from her those purring sounds that earned her sexy little nickname. He missed his Kitty Kat so much. The last time they were together was at his father’s funeral, and he couldn't be with her the way he wanted to be. Now that they were all alone there was nothing stopping him from having his way with her.

But apparently, she had other plans. 

She pushed him hard in the chest, smirking at his surprised grunt as he hit the mattress rather unceremoniously. “Get in,” she instructed him.

He frowned petulantly at her, but did as he was told, dragging himself backwards up the bed with his eyes on her at all times. He felt his mouth go dry as she crawled towards him on all fours like the sexy ass kitten she was. As she reached the space between his open legs, she surprised him by picking up her thong and winding it around his wrists, securing it tight before pushing his arms over his head. 

“Baby…” he pouted.

“Shhhh,” Kat shushed him quietly, thrilled by the submission in his eyes, the surrender in his soft moan, his dick hard and erect in anticipation. Having control over a man like him felt so empowering. Though sexually submissive to him, Kat always enjoyed it when the roles were switched. It never lasted long though, so she planned to make the most of it.

Climbing back down his body, she rubbed her hands on the expanse of his thighs, his caramel skin warm beneath her fingers. She moved higher, coming dangerously close to the pleasure between his legs but avoiding it, for now. She wanted to touch it but the wait was more exciting. Her hands disappeared to squeeze his ass cheeks, and then reappeared over his hips, traveling along the sharpened ridges of his six-pack abs and up to his broad chest. Her body followed suit, sliding up until her thighs bracketed his sides. The little hiss that escaped him as she sat on his torso thrilled her; she knew right away that he could feel her warm moistness against his skin. Her fingers found his nipples next, toying with them before leaning in to lick them, and giggled with amusement when his dick sprang high enough to smack against her backside.

“Fuck, baby, feel what you do to me?” Joe hissed, his cock jumping again as her mouth warmed his neck, nibbling on the shell of his ear as she whispered to him in the softest, deadliest timbre: 

"I’m just getting started, big guy."

Sitting upright on top of him, she reached for the ice bucket, scooping out an ice cube in the shape of an exquisite diamond. The ravenous look in Joe’s eyes matched hers as she sipped on the cube, letting the cold melt on her tongue and travel down her throat. Then, she bent down and kissed him, her cold tongue quickly warming up from the heat of his mouth. The wet muscles moved together in a sweet dance, delightedly intertwining, obsessed with the taste of each other. Kat pressed the ice cube to his chest, giggling when he jerked from the cold, and drew figure eights with it, watching rivulets of water trickle down the sides of his body. She put the ice cube on his right nipple and watched it harden. Then she replaced the ice with her warm mouth on his cold nipple.

“Shit, baby you killin’ me,” he moaned, looking on with hooded eyelids as she kissed down his body. She stopped between his legs, bowing her body in front of his erection, long and thick and hard, precum glistening on his slit. Her tongue darted out to taste it, licking her lips with pleasure. Giving him a sly wink, she took the tip of his dick in her mouth and sucked, winding her tongue around the head like a hungry snake. The moan that escaped his lips was needy and borderline painful, causing her eyes to light up in triumph. 

“When I get my hands on you…” he growled, his expression almost pissed, but Kat knew better. His frustration mingled with his lack of control, control she’d taken from him all day by calling the shots from his travel to the food he ate. The sensual power play continued as she massaged his dick, the thick velvety flesh twitching in her hands as his hands twitched in his makeshift binds. Using the flat of her tongue, she licked up and down his shaft, making slurping sounds that were drowned out by his groans as she spread her saliva all over his dick. She was addicted. He tasted so good and she craved to have her fill.

Putting a smaller ice cube in her mouth, she chewed it, crushing the ice with her teeth. From there, she hugged his dick with her lips, dousing the heat of his flesh with the coldness of her throat. Tiny bits of ice melted against his shaft as she sucked and tongued every inch of him. She could feel his chest heaving and his abs crunching, could hear his strangled moans as he got warmer and got harder in her mouth. He was right where she wanted him. Resting her weight on his burly thighs, she moaned to him to let go, and smiled when seconds later a shout burst from him, his hips arching off the bed as he unloaded down her throat. She drank her fill of him, glancing up to watch the pleasure ravage his huge body, giving a little smile as he floated down back to earth. 

“Oh my god…” he breathed, his body jerking when she pulled away, letting his dick, slick with her spit and his cum, plop down on his thigh. With one more long, soft kiss to his length, she slithered back up his body, pressing her lips to his for a sweet, delicate kiss which heavily contrasted with the heaviness of his dick brushing along her now-wet opening. Pleasing him turned her on in a way her notoriously composed self could never comprehend.

“You came so hard for me, baby. The look on your face was everything,” Kat gifted him a teasing lash of her tongue against his as she ran her hands up his arms to toy with the sheer material holding him hostage. Lifting her body up, she slowly sank down on his dick, a gasp slipping from her when the smooth tip pierced through her soft, slick folds, enabling her to wind her hips to take him all the way in. They both moaned as the thickness of him nudged her sweet spot, coaxing a whine out of her as she wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting him close, making out with him while slowly rocking her body back and forth, grinding her clit on him. It stunned her to this day, how she was able to take him all, his length and girth filling her and hitting her most sensitive spot right away. The power that coursed through her at making him succumb to her will, no different from any pinning combination or submission move, was intoxicating. Her moans and his groans reverberated through the bedroom, the air thick with the scent of sex as she loved on him.

“Untie me. Now,” Joe commanded out of nowhere, the roughness of his tone surprising Kat. One look at the power and pleasure on his beautiful face told her he was not taking no for an answer. Obediently, she  reached up and unraveled the underwear from around his wrists, and she had barely tossed it aside when his hands came around her, finding her backside and thrusting deeper into her. Finally, he could touch her the way he wanted. He loved her ass, enjoyed the feel of it gyrating against his palms. He landed a heavy-handed slap on it, making her burrow her face in his neck with a soft cry, the sound growing more desperate as his fingers caressed the supple flesh of her ass while grinding up into her, making her feel so good.

“Such a badass bitch, yet so weak for me. Weak for this dick,” he purred to her with a kiss to her shoulder. The wicked gleam in his eyes had Kat both frustrated and aroused, but the unmistakable glimpse of lust clouding those eyes showed he was just as weak for her. With every downward motion of her hips, she could see him become more mesmerized, his breaths huskier, his face contorting with unbridled bliss as her pussy squeezed his length in deep, throbbing pulls. Sensing him trying to regain control, she beat him to it, pushing up and steadying herself on top of him. With both hands planted on his strong chest, she adjusted her legs in a squat and began bouncing on his dick, up and down, fucking him, taking from him what she wanted, giving him what he needed. 

“Fuck, that’s it, kitten, ride the shit outta my dick,” Joe groaned, his huge hands now clamped around her waist. “I’m here now, baby. I gotchu. Take it out on me, take all that stress out on me.” It was a wonder to watch her, her knees up and wide apart, treating him to the sight of her moist flesh gliding all the way down his turgid flesh and back up, leaving the base of his dick a wet, slippery mess. It looked incredible and felt even better. “You so wet for me, baby girl,” he rasped, reaching up to massage her bouncing breasts. “I love it when you use me. You love using Daddy’s big dick, huh?”

"Yes, Daddy I love it...Shiiit, oh my goddd!" Kat threw her head back, her moans shaky, her body trembling on top of him as waves of ecstasy washed over her thanks to the orgasm wracking her from head to toe.  

“Unnhh yeah, come for Daddy, come on my dick,” he moaned back to her, his full lips parted and panting, his eyes boring into hers as he watched her come undone. Overcome with passion, he sat upright and tugged her flush against him, his breath hitching as the action sank him even deeper into her. He needed to hold her to him, needed to make her all his. “I ain’t pullin’ out,” he announced, moving her on him again, “I'ma come all up inside you, baby.”

His words sank in, but any coherent answer she had disappeared with another rake of his dick against her g-spot. Wordlessly, Kat snuggled into his warm embrace, locking her arms and legs around him as she continued to grind on him in a deliciously erotic rhythm. Wrapping his arms around her waist, Joe planted a big kiss upon her throat, her jaw, then her lips, enjoying the taste of her moans as his hips rolled along with hers like a choreographed dance. Emotions were high as they joined as one, surrounded by the sounds of the newfound love they were finally expressing to each other. The mattress bounced beneath them, the legless bed rocking in tune with their heated bodies rocking on top of it. Every worry they had was gone and replaced with a hunger and need for the other that they both knew they would never be able to satiate.

"I love you," Joe whispered, pushing her hair out of her eyes to gaze into them.

“I love you too, baby...oh fuck,” Kat panted, burying her face in his shoulder, her hands sliding down to grip his ass as she bucked her hips like a mad woman. Joe moved with her, not missing a single beat. His own release was building fast within him, too fast. The blood was pounding in his head and tightening his balls as her pussy squeezed his cock so tight he was having a hard time catching his breath. They soon realized they were climaxing together, both shaking from the intense, throbbing waves of pleasure. Kat’s toes curled into the sheets as she felt his warm fluid gushing into her pussy just like he wanted, felt his body pulse as hard as his dick pulsing deep inside of her. No piece of music, no music video she created could ever compare to the magic she made with this incredible man, ever be as beautiful as the sight of his face scrunching up helplessly as his orgasm consumed him. So she kept her eyes on him for as long as she could, watching all the emotions sweep his gorgeous visage like an unforgettable movie. 

An eternity later, their movements slowed, their breathing calmed, their hearts racing as one as the world returned to normal. Joe felt light as air as he fell back onto the bed, Kat melting into him with her head on his chest, where his heart beat for her. He was still inside her and she kept him there, wanted to be filled with all his love in the very best way.

“Welcome home, my love,” she giggled, soothed by his own throaty chuckle vibrating against her skin. Her eyes fluttered shut as his lips pressed her forehead. She wished she could bottle the sound of his laugh, the feeling of his soft lips, bottle this very moment forever.

“Glad to be home, my love,” he answered, his fingers caressing her back as he kissed her mouth. “I can tell my time in L.A. is gonna be fun.”

"Mm-hmm. We got all week, Daddy," Kat eyed him with a sly smile, tracing her manicured index finger along his tattooed pectoral, "Like I said, we're just getting started."

THE END.

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

A/N: This is the only story I've had the energy to complete. I'd love to know your thoughts!

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[softmaki]

c/w; gn reader, he calls you doll once, choking but not really, manhandling, fwb dynamic, pent up leon, dry humping, a bit ooc so I’m sorry for that, some dirty talk, if I missed any lmk!

thinking about roommate!leon, who you’ve somehow found yourself in a fwb situation with. you’re still unsure how this situation came to be. but you don’t find yourself complaining about that when you have your roommate come home from work, all frustrated and annoyed, and knowing you’re in for an interesting ride.

his hands find purchase tightly on your hips as soon as the door slams shut behind him and he manages to find you in your shared kitchen, lazily reading the back of a box from which your snacking on. your eyes widen in surprise at his urgency, pushing the box further away from yourself and swallowing thickly.

you don’t say anything. his hips push you into the counter as his own come behind you, a huff escaping his nose as his hands knead the flesh of your hips in his hands. the edge of the countertop digs into your skin, the coolness of the granite top biting in a soothing way. your palms flatten out against the countertop, pushing yourself straight up to feel his chest against your back. your head turns to the side, and your eyes lock with his own blue ones.

you know the cloudy look in those eyes. fuck, you know what’s gonna happen.

“is this okay?” his voice is rough. he’s impatient despite being so close, and even despite his frustration he wants to be sure you’re okay with him doing this. his hands grab harshly at your hips as he rolls his hips into you involuntarily, lips rosy and bruised from how hard he’s biting at them.

“yes.” breathless. it’s always been okay if it’s him.

he doesn’t wait for anything further. his lips crash onto yours, the angle awkward as your neck strains to the side enough to make the messy kiss feel relieving. it’s urgent, animalistic, and sloppy. one of his hands disconnects from its rightful place, a meek escaping your throat shortly before he grabs your neck with the stray hand and gently squeezes. it’s not enough to cut off the flow of blood, instead he rests his hand on you as if you’d disappear if he’s not holding you tight enough.

groaning against you, his lips detach from your own. that earns a disappointment whine from you, though your caught off guard as the hand on your throat moves to rest on the back of your neck. his hand pushes your neck down to bend you over the counter. his other hand leaves your hips and finds itself grabbing your arms and pinning them behind your back.

“y’don’t even know how long I’ve waited for this, doll.”

his breath is hot on the shell of your ear, and his words earn nothing less than a wanton moan out of you as his hips roll into your ass. the friction you both finally feel is what you assume heaven to be.

he’s rough and demanding. the pace of his hips only picks up the longer your held in this position. from the corner of your eye you can see his rugged face as his teeth leave marks on his lips, jaw falling open every few moments to release a quiet pant that makes you envious of the air that drinks in his sounds instead of your ears. the hand from your neck snakes down to the hem of your shirt, lifting it up enough to grab at the soft skin below it instead, a guttural moan escaping his throat as his hips roll against you harsher.

“fuuuck, baby. need my cock in you now. fuckin missed this hole. can’t take it anymore, need’ya now.”

you’re tugged out of the hazy state the pleasurable friction left you in, finding yourself flipped onto your back on the counter with leon slotting himself between your legs. he doesn’t struggle with the belt in his fingers and the metal clanking of the buckle against the tiled floors reverberates in the kitchen.

your mouth salivates, hands rushing down to remove your own trousers.

a/n; long time no see! i’m so sorry for the year long hiatus. if it was a crime to be erratic in posting i’d be in for life. this is super rushed and not checked, so if there’s any spelling errors lmk! i’ve been super starved of fic ideas or anything of the sort and feel like my writings not up to par. feel free to suggest anything I could work with, and if I disappear for another year or so please don’t hold it against me 😭🙏

[dystopyx-blog]

Bro I think so hard about being in TWST without meds but specifically with Floyd. The way he just, doesn't care. You're tired? Awww how sad, he wants to play with his favorite shrimpy. You think he doesn't care at all until you hurt yourself and suddenly he's shackled to your side.

I just got like brain blasted by the SH post due to my own spiraling and like tjis idea alone has given me so much comfort

bro Floyd comfort…. I mean he is literally a comfort character for me, if it isn’t obvious lol. I’m really really glad I could give you some comfort! Genuinely, that gives ME comfort. Especially since my yandere twst posts are also meant to give me comfort, so the fact they do the same for others warms my heart.

It’s so surprising the first time Floyd comforts you. He approaches you, going “hey hey hey, what’s the matter with shrimpy? :(“ and you try to tell him it’s nothing. “Ain’t nothin’ if it got shrimpy sad. Tell me what’s wrong.” And to your surprise he sits and listens. And he’s a good listener, at least for you in that specific moment. He doesn’t interrupt, he doesn’t make fun of you, he sits there and hums to let you know he’s listening. You find yourself spilling everything to him, it’s surprisingly easy to. Maybe you shouldn’t have, maybe he’ll just use it all against you in the future, who fucking cares, this is what you need right now. For a second you wonder if this is actually Jade using Shock the Heart on you somehow. But no, it’s Floyd. A seemingly very out of character Floyd? After pouring your heart out to him, he hits you with a sympathetic stare. “Damn, shrimpy,” he says, “that really sucks…”

Then he gets up and you assume, that’s it, he’s gonna leave me here now. But he offers you a hand and a grin. “C’mon Shrimpy, I’m gonna cheer you up.” ‘And he will try his damndest to do just that, taking you all over campus to find something to lift your spirits. But really, the very process of hanging out with him and watching him try to find something to do with you is enough to have you smiling. You end up in the Mostro Lounge, Floyd promising to get ya whatever you want. Unfortunately, Jade is the one to take your order, which means, of course, you’re subject to his needling. But then Floyd shoos him away. And later, when Azul himself appears at your table, hoping to get his suckers on useful information, Floyd glares at him and tells him to leave you alone. “Great Seven, why can’t anyone just leave us alone? Cant they see I’m tryna spend time with my shrimpy?” And maybe you don’t realize it at the time, still so caught off guard from what seemed to be a total flip in personality, but he meant it when he called you his shrimpy. If you were anyone else, he wouldn’t have given a fuck, it’s only because you were you that Floyd was at all invested in your feelings. Cuz everything about his shrimpy is interesting and entertaining. That’s why they’re his. You notice Floyd hangs out with you a lot more after that, stuck to your side like glue. He’s awful for ADD considering his sudden swings in mood. You get distracted, but it’s even worse with him because once he’s in the mood to do something he just does it. So you’ll be trying to focus on work, and he’ll be there because he’s basically always with you at this point, and he suddenly decides you two have to go do this random thing right now. It’s the same when you’re in depressions, too, he’ll drag you along. It’s surprisingly helpful, though. It’s hard to be bored with Floyd, which makes sense considering how much he hates being bored. So even without your antidepressants… well, at least you have Floyd Leech??

[ramp-it-up]

That Face

Summary: You get drunk and tell Bucky exactly what you want to do to that face.

Pairing: Beefy Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word count: 1.9 K

A/N: You can read this as a companion piece to Red Wings.

Warnings: 18+ Only, Minors DNI. SMUT! Read at your own risk; curate your own experience. More angst on the part of the reader. Sweet Bucky fluff. Jealousy, excessive drinking, intoxication, drunken confessions, face riding, fingering, extreme oral sex (f receiving) anal play, praise kink, allusion to anal sex. Not Beta’d. All errors my own. 

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I Do NOT Consent to my work being reposted, translated or presented on any other blog or site other than by myself.

Bucky was holding you close to him, and it should have been romantic, but it wasn’t.

You were shit faced, and practically falling down with every step.

“Careful Doll, I’m gonna have to carry you home.”

After just six months of dating, you’d moved in with him, your relationship barreling along with breakneck speed, but who wouldn’t fall in love with Bucky?

Who wasn’t still in love with Bucky?

You stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, half a block from your brownstone.

“That sounds hot, Bucky, but I’m pissed…”

“Yeah, I know…”

“No, I’m mad.”

You stomped your foot and wobbled, until Bucky’s hands steadied you again. Bucky bent down and looked you in the eyes.

“You good, Doll?”

His sky blue eyes looked sincere, but jealousy and alcohol wouldn’t let you accept that.

“No! This was supposed to be our night to fuck and have a romantic dinner. You’ve been gone for three weeks. Three weeks, James!”

Bucky looked contrite, but then again there were four of him weaving in front of you right now, so you couldn’t be sure.

“Sorry, Baby. Didn’t know the guys would be in town. It’s my crew.”

“I can take your army buddies, but her. She’s a bitch!”

“Wow. Whoa whoa whoa. You know I don’t like anyone calling women bitches. Even you.”

Bucky straightened up and the stern look he gave you sent a thrill through you, but you weren’t done.

“She still wants you, Bucky. Sharon is a slut. And you always say you love when I’m a slut for your cock.”

Bucky looked around as you started crying and people walking by avoided the scene.

“I don’t want Sharon, Doll. I want you.”

Bucky looked down at you, eyes sparkling with amusement at your jealousy. Even his voice was smiling. It made you madder and you stumbled as you advanced on him, bucking up to the man who was a foot taller than you.

“Look at that fucking face.”

You reached up and took his chin between your fingers.

“No one gets to ride this dimple but me!”

This time Bucky didn’t care about who heard, you’d peaked his interest. His eyebrow shot up.

Even though drunk, you read his expression.

“Yep!”

You nodded and it threw you off balance, but luckily Bucky was there.

“Betcha didn’t know that I touch myself to the memories of the feeling of that chin between my legs. Did it the entire time you were gone. That cock is something else Bucky, but that face. I just want to ride it into the sunset….”

This was new information to Bucky. You seemed to love when he ate you out, but you were always hesitant to ride his face. He licked his lips as he thought of you pleasuring yourself to the thought of his face.

Then he grinned.

You read him again.

“Oh no! No no no. You think you got me. But you said you were mine…”

Bucky leaned down to kiss your forehead.

“I am yours, Doll.”

“So she can’t ride your face?”

Bucky slowly shook his head.

“No, only you.”

You sighed and sagged into his arm.

“Good, because I-“

And that was the last thing you remembered from that night.

You woke up the next morning, head pounding. You looked around, grateful to be in your bed. And grateful for your boyfriend, who’d left a bottle of water and some aspirin on the bedside table.

You could hear Bucky puttering around in the kitchen but you weren’t quite ready to eat.

You eagerly took the pills and drank the bottle down. Then, you turned on the shower as you brushed your teeth.

You reflected on the gathering at The Howling Commando, the neighborhood bar so familiar to you as you met Bucky’s friends. Which included Sharon Carter.

Bucky’s ex.

“Bucky’s just being nice, y’know?”

Steve tried to reassure you as she and Bucky caught up in the corner. You nodded back at Steve, but when Bucky smiled at Sharon was when you ordered your first shot of Jameson’s.

You showered as you tried to remember the rest of the night. But all you could remember was Bucky’s sweet face. You wrapped up in a towel and sat on the bed as you thought of how sweet Bucky was. He was so cute. That face.

That face.

“Shit!”

Your head fell into your hands as you remembered what happened the night before.

“What’s wrong, Doll?”

You looked up and your heart dropped.

Bucky was clad in only sleep pants and you could tell that there was nothing underneath.

You licked your lips, not bothering to hide your stare. Bucky came and sat down on the bed.

“See something you like, Doll?”

“Morning.”

“G’morning Sunshine..”

Bucky leaned down and kissed you on the cheek, chaste, despite the look in his eye. Your eyes fell to his lips. And lower.

Bucky licked his lips and rubbed his chin.

“You didn’t answer my question, Doll.”

Bucky’s mouth was an inch from yours. He reached for your towel and hooked his finger at the makeshift knot, causing his fingernail to brush your nipple.

“Don’t tease me Bucky…”

“I should say the same to you, Doll. You told me all the things you wanted to do to my face and then passed out.”

“James! I was drunk!”

“They say we are the most honest when we’re drunk.”

Bucky kissed you and then looked into your eyes.

“D’you believe that I don’t care about Sharon?”

You liked into his true blue eyes and you knew he wasn’t lying.

“I believe you. I love you, Bucky.”

“I love you too, Doll.”

You reached up and caressed his lips and chin.

“Gotta admit. This face is pretty irresistible.”

Bucky grinned and you leaned in for a kiss and climbed on his lap, grinding as he took your towel off.

“Been so long, Bucky.”

Bucky’s hands caressed you as he leaned back and let you have your way.

You made your way down his body, reacquainting yourself with his form with your lips, tongue, and fingers. He lifted his hips as you pulled down his pajama pants, lightly scratching his thighs on the way down.

“God I missed you so much, Doll. Spent all last night just waiting until we could get home. Wanted to lose myself in you.”

You had Bucky in your hand, sitting on his legs as you stroked his half-hard cock to full life.

“M’sorry Babe. How can I make it up to you?”

You looked up at him, ready to suck his soul out.

“Come up here and ride this irresistible face.”

You gasped as Bucky pulled you up his body until you were kneeling over him.

“There she is.”

Bucky’s fingers helped to separate your lips as he breathed hot breath into your cunt.

“So fucking wet for me.”

And then he went to work on licking into your tangy goodness.

“So good. Such a good girl for me. Such a good pussy.”

Bucky sat you down and suckled your clit, pulling on it like it was gum, stretching it and your soul out for the world (inside your bedroom) to see. He was kneading your breasts and pulling your nipples, serving to make you wetter and him messier.

But it was only just beginning as you started gyrating on his chin.

Bucky smacked your ass and pushed you over on your hands and knees again.

“That’s a girl. Bounce on my tongue.”

You did as you were told, feeling Bucky’s chin in your vagina each time you bounced on his tongue.

“Smear that shit all over my fuckin face Doll. You know you want to.”

Bucky took your ass in his hands and then started moving you back and forth on his face. You were overwhelmed with numerous sensations as his lips, tongue and chin, covered with short facial hair, destroyed your soul.

“Now sit up and fuck this face, Doll. Please. ”

You peered down at his bright blue eyes as his fingertips grazed your stomach. You obeyed him as you pulled his hair and took your throne, his thick, wide tongue spearing into you as you fucked his face.

His chin was now grazing your puckered hole, and you moaned as the scruffy dimpled part of him made you tremble.

“J-James…”

Bucky spread your cheeks and moved his tongue so that it could invade your inmost parts. He licked you from ass to clit and your legs started trembling.

You leaned back over and bounced in his tongue again, holding your breasts with one hand as you braced against the wall with the other.

Bucky’s hand snaked around to flick your clit as you gasped and fully sat on his face as his tongue speared into you, twisting and curling, not as all consuming as his cock, but reaching that special spot inside you nonetheless.

You gasped and sat back, hand on his sternum as you rolled your hips into his face.

“Oh. Ohhhh, oh Jamesssss.”

You whimpered, and your crying-like noises as you moved told him how it felt.

“So… fuck it feels so good…

You were grabbing his hair as he craned his neck upward to look at you.

Bucky growled into your cunt then lifted you upright again, his thumb slipping into your ass. This caused a gush of your fluids into his mouth and he started moaning.

“Mmmmmm. Mmhmmmm!”

“Oahhhh oh ahhh.”

Bucky was still breaching your ass as his tongue sped up impossibly and his lips suckled your clit intermittently.

“More… please!”

You were seeing stars as you reached back and pushed Bucky’s thumb in to the hilt.

Bucky moaned as you started bouncing again. His hand was fucking your ass as you rode his face.

“Please please please…”

“Hmmph… yesssss.”

Bucky spoke into your cunt as you started to reach your crescendo. He could taste your orgasm coming before it happened. Everything sped up.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!”

“Ummmmmm!”

Bucky was in heaven as you continued to gush into his mouth.

You came with a scream as Bucky lapped you all up.

“Unnnnh!”

Bucky pulsed precum on his stomach as you came on his face.

“Unh ahhhh.

“So pretty, Doll. Stay right here.”

Bucky kissed your lips as you quivered in front of him.

“Want this ass. Gonna give it to me?”

“Bucky…”

“She’s ready for me now.”

Bucky’s finger found that hole again.

“Gonna make you feel real good.”

You whimpered as Bucky spit on his fingers and manipulated two of them inside you.

He gave your clit a peck with his lips and you jumped.

“Nice and loose for me.”

You looked down on him adoringly and carded your fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp. He moaned.

“Please Doll. But only if you want that too. I need you. You’re my best girl. My good girl.”

You looked back, his cock jumping on his abs, sticky with his pre cum. You shuddered at his praise and at the thought of him inside that hole. But as Bucky probed and kissed you further, you knew you wanted it.

You didn’t need to look back down to know that Bucky was buried in your cunt again, bringing you to another peak. Instead, your head lolled back on your shoulders as you rode Bucky’s mouth again.

“Anything! Anything you want, Bucky…I want it too! Ah…”

You just couldn’t resist that face.

[remxedmoon]

You should tell us about color psychology that sounds cool as hell

YES… HA HA HA… YES!

GGGOD I WISH I WASN’T OUT OF THE HOUSE RIGHT NOW. but i’ve been thinking about colors literally all day so you all get to be subject to my madness! sorry this is long and rambly wauaua. nightmarishly long post under the cut.

okay. first things first, a few basics. color theory and color psychology tend to get confused a lot in discussions, but they usually refer to different things. color theory is more about we physically perceive colors (color wheels and color schemes the like), while color psychology focuses on our emotional response to colors. if you’re familiar with the children’s hospital color theory post, that poster wasn’t actually talking about color theory, but color psychology (and also it’s incredibly surface level and heavily misunderstands the subject because in what fucking universe does the quantity of positive associations with a color matter more than the context it’s used in and sorry i have personal beef with this tumblr post).

color theory is also a special interest of mine but i’m not gonna touch on it too much here because it’s not entirely important. mmmaybe another time…

essentially, certain colors (and color combinations) have associations in our brains and that affect our behavior and emotions. these associations are also very much affected by the context a color is used in. colors don’t exist in a vacuum! so while red can symbolize passion and love when used in something like a dress or a bouquet of flowers, it has a very different connotation when it’s, say, splattered on the walls or smeared on the ground in a snail trail.

or for a less Children’s Hospital Themed example, i’ll put my euphrasie and king designs here!

(of course the saturation and brightness of these blues play a massive part in how they’re perceived but this is not a post about color theory this is n)

and, of course, combining colors in a piece can also change their meanings!! i’m about to get real fucking normal.

i’m gonna be focusing on the color combo of red and yellow here because it’s the one that’s most relevant to my art (and also it’s really interesting.) basically, seeing these two colors together activates the part of our brain that controls our appetite, making us actually feel hungry. this is why so many food companies use red and yellow in their branding! it’s neat stuff!!

also, if you’re familiar with it, this is why the mv for butcher vanity uses this color palette!! along with red’s general associations with danger and blood, the color combo also physically induces hunger. pretty fitting for a song about cannibalism!

(there is also red’s association with lust and passion and how that intersects with the double meaning in the lyrics but i cannot derail this post into being an analysis of butcher vanity i’m sorry. we’d be here all week. maybe another day... wipes a tear from my eye)

and i think this might be the reason why some people feel hungry when they see my art, even when i’m not drawing food. while i don’t tend to use red outright, most of my art has very warm undertones (red-oranges and yellows especially), which could be activating that hunger response??

(ah fuck color theory managed to weasel its way into this post again)

admittedly this part is just speculation on my end. i think my rendering style and Shapes also play a role in it, but it’s interesting for me to think about!!

this is only scratching the surface of how complicated colors can get. i was going to go on an entire tangent about color grading and how green lighting can make a scene feel unnerving but this post is already Too Fucking Long. aaaa super sorry if this is Rambly or hard to understand!! i’m not Entirely sure how much the average person knows about color theory and psychology so if there’s any confusing terms here i’m fine with adding stuff for clarity!

wauauuaa thank you so much for asking!!!! i love talking about colors.

tl;dr colors have a bunch of different emotions and meanings tied to them, but you’ve gotta pay attention to the context in which it’s being used. so maybe take a step back before you put that thick red trail on the floor of your children’s hospital.

[aestheticaltcow]

The Aftermath

Carmy left- he just left? Where the heck was he? Was he even alive? Your anxiety almost gets the best of you.

The Bear Masterlist

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MDNI 18+

You groaned as you stretched, trying to crack your back. You’d been cleaning all afternoon, Carmy was still MIA, and this was the one thing you knew would distract you enough not to storm into The Bear demanding to know where your husband had been last night. You hopped up on the counter and grabbed your phone from the charger. A knot formed in the back of your throat when you saw a text from Carmy displayed on your lock screen.

Sorry about last night, baby.

On my way home.

“Okay. Fuck you, Carmy. At least you’re alive.” you mumbled to yourself before hopping down from the counter and going down the hallway to your bedroom. You knew the two of you would have a screaming match when he got home; you rolled your eyes at the thought. He was usually predictable; this running away from home debacle threw you for a loop. Since the fighting was inevitable, you opted to take care of yourself a little bit at least, and an everything-shower seemed like the move.

Pregnancy was hard; you were in a constant state of nausea, you were exhausted, you had almost daily migraines toward the end, and, oh boy… hormones were interesting. You gained a decent amount of weight, but loved how you looked. Carrying Mia made every body insecurity you had vanish. You felt powerful as she grew in your womb, and the feelings were only amplified by the way Carmy would caress your stomach at night when he’d get home from work. He’d pepper kisses across your stomach and talk to Mia as he helped you rub shea butter in an attempt to prevent stretch marks. You laughed about it now as you stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Cellulite, stretch marks, loose skin, and a c-section scar decorated your body. All those insecurities you’d thought vanished returned as soon as you showered for the first time post-partum. You didn’t want anyone to see you, especially Carmy. 

You’d always been so secure in your relationship with Carmy. Something ignited within you when you saw him sitting at the bar by himself the night the two of you met. He was sexy and aloof. You had turned to your friend and told her, ‘I’m gonna marry that guy,’ and cocked your head in Carmy’s direction. She gave you a nod of approval, and you were off. He was shy and confused about why the prettiest girl in the bar would want to talk to some loner drinking a ginger ale instead of one of the guys coming up to her throughout the night. After months of casual hookups or late-night lounging around his apartment, Carmy found the courage to take you out on an actual date. After that, you declared he was your boyfriend. He admitted to being in love with you and was overjoyed when you returned the sentiment. Carmy was your knight in shining armor. You knew he was in your corner if you ever had a problem or needed to talk about something. It was you and him against the world, and it only amplified when he proposed to you. The two of you had a small wedding on the beach and decided to travel for a few months. When the two of you started dating, Carmy recounted tales from his time in culinary school- you were shocked that the man had lived in Frances for years but hadn’t explored the city beyond his campus or the restaurants he worked at. Exploring Europe together felt like a dream; it was everything you’d wanted to do with him. The two of you hadn’t planned on having kids, but after a couple of years of living as a married couple and buying your home, it felt like a natural progression to just ‘see what would happen’ if you got off of your birth control.

Now you stood in the shower while your mother took care of your baby and your bitch of a husband hid at work. You sighed and exited the shower, wrapping your hair in a towel and tying your bathrobe at the waist. You checked your phone to see no new messages from Carmy and that Natalie had left you on read.

As you blow-dried your hair, you couldn’t shake the thoughts of Carmy doing something dumb last night. You knew he’d never cheat on you, but the curiosity about where he’d gone was killing you. You took your time blowing out your hair and doing your skincare routine. As you brushed your teeth, you heard the front door open. “Hey… I’m home.” Carmy’s voice called through the house. Your stomach twisted at the sound. You took a deep breath and quickly put on deodorant before walking out of the bathroom in a pair of fresh pajamas. After contemplating jumping out the window to avoid this conversation from happening, you cautiously exited the bedroom. You went down the hallway to see Carmy washing his hands in the kitchen.

“Hey.” you grinned, rubbing your arm nervously. Carmy inhaled sharply before closing the distance between the two of you. He wrapped his arms around you tightly, feeling the stress of the day melt away as he took in the scent of your conditioner. “I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have left like that,” he spoke into your hair. You sighed and hesitantly hugged him; he rubbed circles into your back and wished to go back in time and change what had happened. 

“Where were you? You’ve never done something like that before- I thought you were dead or something Carmy.” Carmy tucked your head under his chin and contemplated what he should say. He knew he’d have to come clean eventually but wanted to relish in this moment.

“I just drove around and went to work early.” he lied, hoping you’d not push it further. Natalie had ripped him a new one when he’d confessed the details of his indiscretion. She ranted about how she’d feel if Pete had treated her like that; she’d kick his ass to the curb. “You realize she’s gonna leave your ass, right? You absolutely can not sleep at my house- Carmen Anthony Berzatto, you’re no better than Dad.” before he could respond, Natalie threatened to kick his ass if he didn’t come clean to you about what happened. Carmy wanted to tell you, but being compared to his father was something he hadn’t expected Natalie to say. He didn’t know the guy that well, but he knew a little about the cheating. He didn’t have a second family or kids outside his marriage with Donna, but he saw the hurt it put her through and vowed never to be like the man. Now he stood in his kitchen holding his wife- the love of his fucking life, lying about his whereabouts from the night before. Yeah, he didn’t get past third base, but would he have gone all the way if he had gotten hard? Would you constitute this as cheating? Would you leave him and keep Mia from him? He pushed the thoughts back and pressed his nose into your hair. He took in the scent of your conditioner, just in case this was the last time.

You pulled away from the hug and nodded, “Okay. I trust you, but never do something like that again. You scared the crap out of me.” 

Carmy and you sat at the dining room table that night and talked about your insecurities postpartum and that while you were medically cleared to have sex, you were nervous about the actual act. He nodded, and you felt vindicated. You kissed his cheek and headed into the kitchen to order dinner. Carmy grinned and fished his phone out of his pocket. He deleted his text chain with Selena and quickly blocked her number before you came back to ask if he had any preferences for dinner. Carmy shook his head, “Whatever you want, baby.”

The two of you ate dinner in the living room and watched the newest cheesy romcom on Netflix. Carmy sat back and took in the moment. It was like when the two of you had started dating. You’d always had some kind of freelance video editing job or some other creative endeavor that gave you a good amount of flexibility in your schedule. No matter how late he’d get off, you were always down to come over, watch a movie, eat takeout, or whatever new recipe he was trying to perfect. You explained that quality time was your main language, so as long as you were together, you were happy doing whatever with him. 

As the movie continued, you’d put your head on Carmy’s chest and held onto his waist. He had an arm around your shoulder- he stunk of his usual kitchen smells and smoke, but there was another scent you couldn’t quite place. “I should probably shower if you wanna cuddle, baby.” he laughed as you pushed a hand under the hem of his T-shirt. Carmy had long forgotten about the hickey that decorated his collarbone. You hummed in disagreement, “Your BO is comforting Carm…” 

Carmy laughed and kissed the top of your head. Carmy tapped your shoulder as the movie ended, signaling he wanted to get off the couch: “I need a shower, baby.” He shifted in his seat, and you looked up at him. “Kiss me?” you asked, looking up at him through your lashes. Carmy swallowed and hurriedly nodded as he gently placed his lips on yours. You smiled into the kiss as the taste of tobacco and spearmint flooded your tastebuds. You removed your hand from under Carmy’s shirt and put it on his cheek. Carmy wasn’t sure where to put his hands. This felt like a 180 from the previous day, confusing and excited him.

You threw a leg over Carmy’s hips to straddle him as the kiss turned more passionate. Carmy’s hands found your hips; his touch felt like electricity shooting through your body in the best way. You pulled away from the kiss, gently pulling Carmy’s bottom lip between your teeth, eliciting a deep throaty moan from him. You ran your hands down Carmy’s chest. He closed his eyes, focusing on the sensation of your nails tickling his skin through the material of his shirt. “Still need me, baby?” you asked, leaning in to kiss Carmy’s jaw. “Still need to be inside of me?” you said as you trailed kisses up his jaw toward his earlobe. You felt his cock harden beneath you as you rolled your hips against him. Carmy’s grip on your hips tightened at the sensation, “Please, baby.” he whined. You giggled at his response and slowly swirled your tongue around Carmy’s earlobe before leaning back on his thighs. Carmy leaned back into the couch. His eyes were dark with lust as you reached for the hem of your shirt, quickly discarding it. 

Carmy’s eyes widened at the sight of your bare breasts, “Fuckin’ hell, baby.” he muttered. You bit your lip as Carmy stared at you, “Can-can I-” Carmy began to stutter before you cut him off by bringing one of his hands to your chest. “Fuck.” Carmy laughed as he snaked an arm around your waist to bring you closer. You giggled as Carmy massaged your breast in his large, calloused hand, “Baby- fuck, you’re so sexy.” 

You moaned softly as Carmy gently pushed you back onto the couch before trailing delicate kisses down your stomach to the top of your pajama shorts. As eager as he was to remove them, he still felt like he was dreaming. Your eyes met and you nodded, Carmy bit his lip holding back a groan. He swiftly yanked the soft cotton material down your legs to reveal your lack of panties. He smirked as he spread your legs wider and stared down at your core like a starved animal. 

“Carmy?” you asked softly, “Do you want me to stop?” he responded, hoping you would say ‘no.’ You shook your head, “Be gentle?” you whispered. Carmy nodded, “Of course, baby. Say, stop, and I will…” 

Carmy put your legs over his shoulders and nuzzled his face between your thighs, placing delicate kisses against your folds. Your legs shook as he ran his tongue up to your clit, “Mmm,” you hummed as he took your clit between his lips. “Oooh,” you moaned as Carmy slowly pushed his index finger into your entrance. Your reaction only fueled Carmy’s desire to please you. As your juices flooded his tastebuds, you bucked your hips up against his mouth, making him moan against your clit.

“I need you,” you whined, pulling at Carmy’s hair. Reluctantly, he pulled his mouth away from your heat. “What do you need me to do, baby?” Carmy teased. You giggled as he moved to hover above your body. You pulled at the hem of his T-shirt, wanting to feel his skin against yours. 

Carmy’s body tensed. You noticed the color drain from his face, the weight of his actions from the night prior finally hitting him. “Are you okay, Carmen?” you asked as you stopped pulling at his shirt. He nodded, “Yeah-h.” 

You didn’t believe him. “You’re being weird. I don’t care that you’re gross from work. I want you.” You looked into his eyes and could sense he was hiding something from you. “I’m not being weird,” he said defensively. You shook your head, pushed up at his chest, and sat up against the arm of the couch. “You literally left last night because I didn’t want to have sex- now I want you and you’re being fuckin’ weird. Take your clothees off and fuck me.” you demanded, Carmy swallowed and sat up on the couch. He shouldn’t have let it go this far, you rolled your eyes and yanked his shirt off. 

“What the fuck is that!” you screamed when you saw the dark purple hickey decorating his collar bone, Carmy stared at you nervously. “YOU FUCKIN’ LIAR!” you screamed louder pushing yourself off the couch picking up your T-shirt from the floor. 

“Baby, I swear—I didn’t—" Carmy explained as he scrambled to his feet as you walked down the hallway toward your bedroom. Your blood boiled at the thought of Carmy fucking another woman last night while he was ‘getting air,’ “YOU’RE A FUCKING LIAR GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS HOUSE, I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD CARMEN!” you screamed at the top of your lungs as you glared at him as tears started to fall from your eyes. Carmy’s face regained color and softened in reaction to your screams. 

“Y/N, it was a mistake! We didn't have sex because I couldn’t get hard-” Carmy attempted to explain the situation, and you shook your head in response. “That’s fuckin’ bullshit! Get out!” you screamed through your tears.

Carmy dropped to his knees and reached out for your hand. You slapped it away and ignored his begs to hear him out and let him explain what had happened. “No. No. I don’t want to- that’s why you wanted to fuckin’ shower so bad, right?! Didn’t want to fuck your wife with your dirty fuckin’ cock you fucking liar!” you screamed as you attempted to pull your wedding ring off of your finger. When it wouldn’t budge, you screamed in frustration and slammed the bedroom door. 

Carmy fell back and brought his knees to his chest, the weight of his actions truly hitting him when you had tried to take off your wedding ring. He really had ruined his marriage. Carmy heard your sobs through the door as he got up, “Y/N- it was a mistake. I love you. I love you so fuckin’ much-” 

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE CARMEN! I FUCKING HATE YOU!”

~

Tag List

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[novacorpsrecruit]

Care to Dance?

Inspired by @imfinereallyy’s post

Robin, Steve and Eddie planned this night for weeks. They drove up to Indianapolis to spend the evening at the gay bar. A place where they could be themselves and not worry.

Steve took a shot of vodka before turning around at the bar, facing the dance floor. He could see Robin speed talking to a girl about Nancy’s height, the girl gently playing with the edge of Robin’s jacket.

Eddie … well, he looked hot as ever. He was playing billiards in the corner of the bar with another guy, showing him how to angle the cue just right for the perfect hit. Steve could feel jealousy in the pit of his stomach, but he knew he wasn’t Eddie’s type.

Steve’s been harmlessly flirting with Eddie, putting himself out there on the ledge, only for Eddie to talk about some other guy he met in Indy. Steve wondered if this was the guy. If Eddie had planned this night so he could see his guy. It wasn’t wrong if he did. Steve just wished he knew so he could prepare himself for the heartbreak.

He knew Eddie wasn’t his, so it really shouldn’t be a problem, right?

“Hey, baby,” a deep voice said hotly against the shell for his ear. “How come a pretty thing like you is all alone tonight?”

“I’m not alone,” Steve said, turning to face the man — to face the dark, brown eyes, the devilish grin. “Not anymore. You want a drink?”

“I’d much rather see you on the dance floor,” the man said, lifting his chin. His grin still plastered across His face. “Or are you more interested in staring at that metalhead?”

“No, I’d like to. Dance, I mean,” Steve said, feeling his cheeks heat up. He didn’t realize he was that obvious for Eddie. The man put his hand on the small of Steve’s back as he lead him out to the dance floor. It started out innocent at first, arms raised, slowly wrapping around each other’s body as they danced to Depeche Mode. Eventually, Steve had his back pressed up against the man’s front. The man pressed a hot kiss against Steve’s skin. Suddenly, Steve realized he didn’t know the man’s name.

“I’m Steve,” he said, a little loud to be heard over the music.

“Dan — Hey!”

Steve felt Dan’s body yanked away from him. Steve turned to see Eddie standing in between him and Dan, now on the ground. He felt someone grab his arm, he yanked it — before realizing it was Robin holding onto him.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Dan spat.

“You,” Eddie snarled back, venom on his tongue. “You’re dancing on my friend.”

“Eddie —“

“Steve, I got it,” Eddie said over his shoulder, before turning his attention to Dan. “What gives you the right to dance on him like that?”

“I did,” Steve snapped, pulling himself out of Robin’s grip and stepping in front of Eddie. “He asked me to dance and I said yes. What gives, Eddie? What are you doing?”

“Protecting you,” Eddie wrinkled his brow, like it was obvious. “We know he isn’t your type, Steve.”

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” Steve snapped.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Eddie said.

“I don’t know what you have going on,” Dan interrupted, leaning against Steve. His lips were hot near his ear. “But Pretty Boy, you dump the metalhead, you know where to find me.”

“That’s it —“ Eddie nearly lunged forward to chase after Dan, stopped by Robin and Steve.

“Eddie, what the fuck is up with you?” Steve snapped. “We came out to have a good time and you’re ruining it.”

“I’m ruining it?” Eddie scoffed. “He was the one dancing against you! Does that not bother you?”

“No?” Steve wrinkled his nose. “I liked him.”

“Steve,” Robin said, stepping between the two, trying to calm the tension. “You can’t be leading him on like that.”

“Like what?” Steve asked, feeling his gut twist. He knew he was obvious with his crush on Eddie, but he would get over him. He could. If he just found the right person.

“Steve, you’re straight,” Robin said. “He’s probably thinking he was gonna take you home.”

“I’m … straight?” Steve repeated. “What planet are you from?”

“What?!” Eddie and Robin snapped at the same time. Steve looked between the two of them, his expression dropping.

“You guys thought I was straight?” Steve gaped. “I’m grinding on some guy and you think I’m straight?! We’re at a gay club, and you thought I was straight?”

“You’ve always just talked about girls,” Robin said. “We just —“ she looked at Eddie for help, but he provided none. He stood there, shocked, processing.

“Because the guy I want, doesn’t like me that way,” Steve groaned, rubbing his hands over his face. “I’m going for fresh air.”

He pushed past Robin and Eddie to the front of the bar and onto the street. He turned down the alleyway, leaning against the building. He took a deep breath, letting it out.

“Hey.”

Steve looked up at Eddie, offering a cigarette from the box.

“I’m sorry about ruining things with Dan,” Eddie said. “You wanna talk?”

“I just — thought you both knew,” Steve said, taking a cigarette. Eddie flicked his lighter, lighting Steve’s cigarette. “I thought I was obvious. And you even said that ‘Us, queers find each other.’”

“I did say that,” Eddie nodded. “I just thought you were safe, and not …”

“Bisexual,” Steve said, officially coming out. “I’m bisexual.”

“Proud of you,” Eddie said. “Now tell me about this guy you like. And why you don’t think he likes you.”

“He’s super cool. Bad ass,” Steve said, taking a drag of his cigarette. “I know I’m not his type.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve been flirting with him for weeks,” Steve said, putting his heart out on the line. If this failed, maybe Dan won’t mind letting him cry on his shoulder. “And he’s ignored all my advances.”

“Maybe he didn’t realize you were flirting with him,” Eddie said. “You know, maybe he thought you were straight?”

Steve’s eyes snapped to Eddie, attempting to read him. Eddie took a drag off his own cigarette.

“Maybe you could try again?” Eddie offered. Steve felt his heart beat rapidly against his chest.

“Eddie —“

“Yes,” Eddie breathed. “Whatever you want. Yes.”

“You,” Steve said. “I want you.”

Eddie crashed his lips against Steve’s in a hot, messy kiss. A little teethy, as they couldn’t help but smile and laugh. They broke away breathless.

“Come on, big boy,” Eddie said, pulling at Steve’s arm. “Let’s go dance.”

•••••

[hope-you-brought-kneepads-bitch]

Club Fun

A/n: this is a draft that I’ve had for a while and I just kept putting it off posting because I wasn’t sure I liked it but I wanted to put it out and see what other people think 💕 thanks for reading I appreciate it 💕

(This also isn’t proofread at all soooo I’m sorry for any mistakes)

Warnings: 18+ minors DNI, adult themes and Nat being a pain in the ass

"Come on Y/n how bad could a gentleman's club be?" Nat pushed you through the doors even with you groaning and pushing back against her

"Nat I have a literal alien in my body and I don't know what will set them off" you felt a grumble in your head

"I am not a prepubescent teenager Y/n I am sophisticated"

"Only because you can't survive without me out of my body" you grumbled back and Nat really wished she could understand what you were saying to the alien

You looked up and sighed "okay let's go in"

Nat smiled wide and guided you through the small hallway to the second bouncer "hey we're Nat and Y/n, we have a table booked under Tony Stark?"

The man looked you both over the at the list seeing your names and allowing you past "please keep your hands to yourselves and don't try and get any dancer's numbers because they'll just laugh at you" he laughed and you rolled your eyes turning to Nat

"does he think we're kids? Pretty sure I can control myself around some scantily clad women"

Nat scoffed "talk about yourself Y/n, I see a hot woman staring at me I'll give her money my number, my soul anything the sexy lady wants"

You giggled "you'll get us kicked out the moment we sit down at the booth"

Nat ignored you as she eyed up a waitress walking past who gave her a wink in response "yeah yeah whatever I'm gonna go and get some free drinks" she patted you on the back leaving you alone, well with the alien obviously

"We are being stared at"

You glanced around not noticing anything "what are you talking about?"

They turned your body around suddenly nearly falling over before you managed to steady yourself "dude what the fuck, you can't just turn me around like that!" You whisper shouted at them but they ignored you

"There is a redhead lady who is looking at us and biting her lip, I think she is older than us" you were pointed towards said woman and she gave you a wink

"Oh you're right, do you think she wants us to go over?" Before you could say anything else the woman in question walked over to you "hi pretty girl, do you need some help? You look a little lost"

The sweetness in her voice made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and your mouth go dry "oh-er no-no thanks my friend is just getting drinks" you glanced at Nat who was very much not getting your drinks but instead was making out with the waitress she followed after

"It seems you're friend is a little busy right now, I'll take you to your booth" she pulled you towards a booth, her hand gripping your own sweaty mess of a hand.

You were near enough thrown into the booth and the woman followed close near enough sat in your lap "how about I get us some shots? They should loosen your cute tongue"

"...okay" you whispered and the women smiled kissing you on the cheek turning around and singling for a waiter to come over with their tray of shots

"How many miss Scarlet?" The man asked and she told him to put the tray down "thanks Brucie"

He left without another word and she took a glass from the tray pointing it towards you "here you go pretty girl" she tipped the drink towards your mouth and you opened your mouth taking the drink "good?"

You nodded licking the left over liquid from your lips "yeah it's good"

The woman's piercing green eyes were locked onto yours sitting in silence for a few moments before she spoke again "can I interest you in a dance?" She asked sweetly and you shook your head maybe a little too much making her pout

"Awe are you sure? I can relive all of that clear tension coming off of your shoulders, you're too pretty to be stressed"

She stood up bringing you with her and walking off towards Nat who managed to pull her face away from the waitress long enough to talk to you

"Y/n! This place is amazing! This is Maria, she's great" her ragged breath made you laugh "I'm sure she is amazing Nat"

Maria looked behind you to the woman and winked "so Scarlet, is this your new little conquest?"

So her name was Scarlet, or maybe just her stage name, you were certain no one gave their real names out, but this Maria did? She's not a dancer though you guessed?

Scarlet's arms wrapped around your waist getting your attention and she chuckled when you jumped "don't think too hard there pretty girl" she looked to Maria "I offered a dance but she turned me down Mia"

You couldn't see her face but you knew she was pouting about you refusing a dance "Y/n you can't refuse a dance! That's the whole point of the club!"

"I know but-

"No buts Y/n! Go on Scarlet take her to a room and help her relax" Nat demanded ignoring your embarrassed face

"Whatever the costumer wants they get Natalia" Scarlet smirked grabbing your hand leading you through the club away from the safety of people and noise for a quiet private room

"You need to relax honey, I promise you're okay I'll take such good care of you" she purred sitting you down on the couch and you finally looked at her properly seeing the dark red blazer wrapped around her body

"Y/n your body is heating up is everything okay?"

You couldn't answer them instead watching Scarlet unbutton her blazer dropping it to the floor

"Holy shit" you whispered letting your eyes wonder over her lingerie barley covering her body, it was useless being there in all honesty, her breasts were practically spilling out and that's where you met her finger pointing to her face "my eyes are up here princess" she chuckled and your eyes snapped up

"S-sorry!"

She giggled coming towards you and straddling your lap placing a leg on either side "don't say sorry for admiring beauty honey, let's start with your name again"

"Y-y/n" you whispered feeling your hands unintentionally land on her thighs and she gasped "getting bold Y/n? I like it"

"You were moving too slow so I needed to help you Y/n"

You knew they where right, you had a woman, a hot woman you may add on your lap wearing the hottest thing you’ve ever seen and yeah sure it’s part of her job but you could have fun right?

“Get out of your pretty head Y/n” she brought you out of your thoughts and jumped at how you could feel her breath on your face as she whispered in your ear “so Y/n are you going to tell me what you I can do for you?

“This is all new to me so I don’t know what to ask for”

Scarlet looked over you and your slightly trembling body “how about a kiss?" She didn't really wait for answer before kissing you on the lips softly, you remained frozen until you were mentally slapped by your symbiote

"Y/n I do not get aroused or feel sexual tension but even I am suffering through this air of arousal, kiss her back"

You relaxed into the kiss sighing as you kissed her back, feeling Venom slip into your body and elongate your tongue and force her mouth open slipping the long tongue inside and wrapping around her own, Scarlet either didn't realise or didn't care because she moaned into the kiss trying to gain some kind of control

When you both had to pull away for some air Scarlet was shocked seeing the tongue lull out of your mouth "what the hell is that? Looks like your tongue had an erection" when she laughed and didn't run away from you or slap you your heart grew ten sizes, it was nice you guessed if still little strange.

"Can you even talk with that thing?" she giggled and wen to kiss you again but you pulled away letting your tongue return to its normal size

"Everthing okay?" She placed a kiss on your cheek as a reassurance and you smiled

"Have you ever heard of symbiotes?"

She sat back on your lap thinking about it "like that alien that tried to destroy the world? Are you that alien?"

You shook your head "no! No at all, I was just infect-sorry chosen to be a host for one...do you want to meet them?"

Scarlet had to bite her lip to keep herself from laughing "well this is nothing like my normal encounters here but sure, let's see the little alien"

Venom didn't need to be told twice and their tendrils appeared forming a their head smiling at Scarlet

"You are a very pretty lady miss Scarlet, I cannot feel aroused or these silly human feelings but you have a hot body and Y/n agrees"

"Venom! Just stop talking" you groaned trying to get away but you were still trapped under Scarlet's thighs

"God this is so weird, it's a good thing you're hot" she lent forward placing a kiss on your neck and then biting you there, you looked at Venom whispering "go back"

They looked at you funny so you said it again "it's a private moment now Venom"

They understood and retreated back into your body quickly and you focused back on the feeling of her soft lips on your neck.

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

“My lips are chapped Nat” Maria pulled away from Nat who still tried chasing after her “oh come on, they’re not that bad”

The waitress gently pushed her away “you’re insatiable, I like it, give me a few minutes and I’ll take you somewhere nice”

‘Where?” She questioned

“To the best room we have, it’s got a mini fridge” Maria kissed Nat again softly refusing to let her take over the kiss again “plus we can watch the cameras for your friend”

Nat’s eyes widened “there’s cameras in the room?”

Maria laughed “obviously, how else are we supposed to protect our girls?”

She lead Nat through the club into a closed off area and through a door to a room with a couch, a mini fridge and the cameras she mentioned

“This looks like a pervs hangout” Nat commented but Maria just rolled her eyes pushing the redhead to the couch “just sit there and be quiet, if that’s something you can do”

"I prefer being loud" Nat winked

"I can’t wait to prove that later" Maria took some wine out of the fridge and sat next to the woman giving her a kiss on the cheek “okay let’s get this started" she turned on the Tv changing the channel through the rooms before finding you and Scarlet

"Ugh boring they're just talking" nat looked through the screen, she hoped she could read lips so she knew what you were saying, when she got a closer look she noticed Venom's head at the side of you "what the fuck?!"

Maria put down the wine quickly looking at these screen "what's that?! Is that a puppet? Does your friend have a puppet kink? A little odd but I'm sure Scarlet can work with that" Maria was laughing but Nat only let out a small chuckle too focused on why the hell Venom decided to make themselves known, suddenly Scarlet lent forward kissing and started kissing your neck

"The puppet worked" Maria laughed and Nat managed a small laugh "hah yeah sure" she turned the TV off instead not wanting to focus on you and your weird alien friend, she had no idea why Scarlet didn't mind it though

"Well they're boring now"

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

Scarlet's lips moved up to your ear "you're not the only one with a secret princess"

Your smile dropped and you pulled away suddenly but Scarlet just laughed "it's okay honey nothing horrible, do you know what a coven is?"

You flexed your hands on her thighs and swallowed nervously "like witches?"

She smiled "yes"

"Are you a witch?"

She simply nodded and flashed her red eyes making you gasp "shit that's so cool!" You were memorised, maybe a little scared since witches were seen as strange or evil but a dancer at a gentleman's club couldn't be evil...right?

"I'm not evil honey, just someone who gets bored easily and needs something to do"

Did she read your mind?? You looked at her surprised and she giggled "yes princess I can read minds and yours has been a delight to listen too"

That's so weird but cool as well, so what so we do now?"

"Well, my real name is Wanda to start with, I use Scarlet because the guys like it, and for security of course"

You were really trying to listen honestly you were but your eyes kept flickering down to her chest

"You're not listening to a thing I'm saying are you?" Wanda laughed using her finger to lift up your chin "it's okay, I know what you really want" she lent forward to kiss you but a bell went off stopping her in her tracks "oooh sorry princess times up"

She tried pulling away but your fingers dug into her thighs keeping her there "but you were going to kiss me again?”

She raised her eyebrow and smiled at you "I know, I love leaving my clients on edge, it guarantees they come back"

This time Venom growled and appeared again "that seems a little unfair Wanda, we showed you me, I think we deserve a treat"

She just shrugged managing to pull away from you standing up and covering herself with her robe "are you saying you don't want to see me again?"

Both you and Venom were confused

"Because if I slept with you that's what would happen, and I'm quite enjoying your company"

"She is teasing us Y/n"

You agreed "she is"

Wanda watched you as you were thinking, and you knew she was reading your mind "you have some hot thoughts in there Y/n, a stark difference from when we first started, now come on, your friend will be waiting for you"

You sighed reluctantly getting up and going past Wanda when she gave you a small smack on your ass "hey!"

She laughed "I couldn't help myself honey"

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

"Nice to finally see you two out of the room, did you give her the full dance Scarlet?" Maria laughed glancing between the two of you and the redhead smiled wrapping her fingers around your waist "she had a wonderful time Maria, she'll be coming back tomorrow night"

Nat gasped and you looked at her "you're coming back?! Wow Y/n, she must've given you the full treatment eh?"

When your face blushed Wanda kissed your cheek "you're so cute malen'kiy you can have my number, so call me when you're here tomorrow and I'll come and get you"

You nodded and went to kiss Wanda but you weren't too sure until Wanda pulled you in close kissing you hard

"Oooooohhhh!" Nat exclaimed excitedly "Maria did you see that?! My little virgin is getting somewhere!"

You instantly pulled back going bright red "Nat! I'm not a virgin! I've slept with loads of women"

Both women laughed and Wanda tried hiding her own smirk "it's okay princess, I'm an excellent teacher"

You groaned pulling away from the woman "come on Nat before I sink into the ground from embarrassment"

Nat giggled and kissed Maria one more time "so it look's like I'll see you tomorrow?"

"I'll have the usual room ready" she winked in response kissing the redhead again

"Do I get a good-bye kiss?" Wanda pouted and you rolled your eyes walking back to her "I never expected this coming into a strip club" holding the woman's face in your hands you kissed Wanda softly before pulling away then kissing her nose

"Hmm you're my favourite client malen'kiy"

"I have no idea what that Russian word means but I hope it's good"

Wanda giggled kissing the side of your head "Ty takaya ocharovatel'naya printsessa, dumayu, ya ostavlyu tebya ty moya"

You heard Nat soft gasp from the side of you and you whipped your head around to her "did she say something shocking?"

Wanda looked to Nat shaking her head and Nat nodded "just some sickly sweet thing about you, typical for you to come into a gentleman's cub for a dance from a stripper to come out with a potential partner"

You shrugged "hey I can't help it if I have incredible game"

The group burst out laughing even Wanda joined in making you pout

"Y/n I love you I really do but you're really terrible with women, I'm surprised Wanda actually made out with you"

You blushed hard leaner closer into Wanda "yeah well fuck you Nat" okay it wasn't the best comeback but its the only one you could think of

"It's okay Y/n I thought that was a very good comeback" Wanda kissed your cheek "okay honey, I've got to go back to work"

You started to talk back but a finger shushed your lips "I still need money my love but I want you back here tomorrow okay?"

You nodded "I'm definitely coming back all the time Wanda, I'll sit in the corner with a snack"

Wanda held in a giggle rubbing your shoulder "oh honey I don't think my clients would enjoy that"

"Then they'd to keep their hands off of you" you retorted and Wanda laughed "my little possessive girl don't worry, you'll get the special private dances"

It was your turn to blush hard again and you had to keep yourself steady "o-oh okay cool yeah! Great"

Nat laughed “you’re a mess, come on idiot let’s go”

[deancasbigbang]

Title: Paging Doctor Novak

Author: Salamitsunami1

Artist: WitchyWorm

Rating: Explicit

Pairings: Dean/Cas, past Dean/Lisa, past Dean/Rhonda

Length: 40000

Warnings: Graphic and accurate depictions of medicine, medical emergencies, and medical procedures. Past unfaithful Dean. Minor character death

Tags: Rom-com, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Happy Ending, Hospital AU, Sexual Tension, Doctor Sexy M.D., Getting Together

Posting Date: October 31, 2024

Summary: Dean Winchester is many things — a nurse, an in-charge on the medical-surgical floor, and a big fan of the ladies. What he’s not is a commitment kind of guy, and he’s definitely not a night duty kind of guy. Things change when a hook-up-gone-wrong gets him lumped on night duty for an entire month, and to make matters worse, he’s been lumped on night duty with a brand new intern. As with all interns, Doctor Castiel Novak is cocky at best and dangerous at worst, but for some reason, and maybe it’s just the way his ass looks in those teal scrubs, Dean’s got a soft spot for the guy. Or a really hard one. Either way, it’s not long before Dean’s new roster is the least of his concerns; he wants that dorky doctor guy, and fuck, he wants him for real.

Excerpt: Being in charge, Dean’s job is simple — keep on top of any patients coming up from the ER or down from the OR, page the doctor when there’s a problem, and call the doctor when there’s an emergency. That’s how he ended up in Frank Devereaux’s room with the phone to his ear, and because the on-call doctor is almost always an intern this late at night, he’s willing to bet that whoever picks up isn’t gonna know Frank’s ass from his esophagus. “Hello?” “Hello?” Dean questions. “Is this the on-call doc or a Wendy’s?”  “This is Doctor Novak.” “Right. Well, this is Dean from med-surg. I’m calling about Frank Devereaux in bed two. He had a lap-chole yesterday, got back to the ward about six hours ago. His pain’s currently a nine out of ten, he’s just vomited up a whole lot of bile, and I’ve got a real bad feeling.” “Okay,” the intern says, like a question. “Would you like a consult?” Dean sighs wearily. “That’s why I called.” “Of course,” the intern says. “I’m on my way.” The phone call hasn’t exactly filled Dean with confidence, and it only gets worse when the intern stumbles onto the ward — his hair is all over the place, his stethoscope is hanging unevenly around his neck, he’s wearing these teal scrubs that are about a whole size too small and therefore clinging to every inch of him, and he’s wearing them with a pair of fucking Converse high-tops, of all things. All interns are cocky, that’s a given, but the cockiest of all is the surgical intern. Each and every year, guaranteed.  “Hello,” he says. “I’m looking for Dean.” Dean glances down at his own name tag. Unfortunately, it’s still right where he pinned it to his scrub top, so it seems the new intern might not even be able to read. In the interest of being nice, he forces a smile. “You found him.” “Oh. Hello, Dean,” the intern says. “I believe we spoke on the phone.” Dean only nods, waiting for the intern to introduce himself, but he does no such thing. No, this guy just stands there, he runs his fingers through his bedraggled hair, and so now there’s a smear of ink on his forehead where it’s rubbed against whatever’s written on his hand. Pointedly, Dean says, “And what did you say your name was again?” “I’m Doctor Novak.” Dean looks Doctor Novak up, down, then back up again. Taking him apart. He’s got bags under his eyes and cracks in his lips. Doctor or not, this guy’s a fucking mess.  “Well, doc,” Dean says, probably against his better judgment. “Frank’s this way.”

DCBB 2024 Posting Schedule

[loudstan]

(67) Days of Whatever the Fuck that Was (PART 2.)

Summary: Chenle wasn't interested in committed relationships until he met the one. The problem is that now she is the one who doesn't want to commit to him.

Pairing: Werewolf! Chenle x Siren! Female reader

Warnings: OOff where do I start. Things get dubious, and even a bit non-conish sometimes so do not read if that's not something you're into. A lot of mind games, manipulation, gaslighting, and all the red flags you can think of. Y/N is MEAN. Also, this is super long so i had to make two separate posts. Read both if you want to know how it started! SMUT.

(PART 2)

“Why’s Jisung crying?” Kun asked when he saw the youngest member of the pack trying to hide how glossy his eyes were a few days later.

“I’m not,” Jisung replied stubbornly, but the words came out broken.

“He watched (500) Days of Summer,” Renjun deadpanned. 

“You watched–,” Kun burst out laughing. “It’s a romantic comedy! How did you end up crying?”

“It’s not romantic, nor funny,” Jisung disagreed.

Renjun sighed. “He’s worried about Chenle.”

“Oh…” Kun frowned. “Is he still hiding in his room?”

Renjun and Jisung nodded.

Kun sighed and hesitantly walked to Chenle’s room, knocking on the door and letting himself in when he heard a monotonous ‘come in’ from the other side.

“Hey, Lele…,” he greeted awkwardly. “How are you feeling?”

Chenle was sprawling in bed, with dark circles under a pair of eyes stuck to the laptop screen.

“Hm,” he replied, without elaborating.

“What are you up to?” Kun asked casually, walking closer to take a look at the screen. “Oh…You’re watching that movie too…”

Chenle barely nodded. “I’ve watched it  6 times. Each time it becomes more obvious that they would never end up together. Funny, isn’t it?” his dull voice said.

“Lele, I’m so sorry,” Kun said sincerely. Not only for what happened to the younger werewolf,  but also for even mentioning that stupid movie.

“It was gonna happen sooner or later,” Chenle closed his laptop and finally looked at the oldest. “She didn’t want me. Not the way I want her, at least.”

Kun looked at him sadly.

“Maybe I could make my own movie,” Chenle joked unenthusiastically. “The title would be (67) Days of Whatever the Fuck that Was.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” the older offered.

“Sure, you could convince her to take me back,” Chenle chuckled humorlessly. “Forget it, gege. There’s nothing anyone could do,” he said, before putting his laptop away and pulling the covers all the way up until they covered his head. “Can you close the door when you leave, please?”

“I…sure,” Kun murmured, walking out and closing the door quietly.  He stood in the corridor for an entire minute as he considered his options. “Fuck it,” he murmured, for once not caring about his manners.

He went back to the living room where Jisung and Renjun were waiting expectantly. “Get up, you two,” Kun told them. “We’re going to the bar.”

“Yeosang, I’m fine,” you insisted after he begged you to go rest for the 5th time.

“ You haven’t seen your mate in a week, and you know that can affect your health. You shouldn’t abuse your body.”

“It’s almost time to close. There are like 5 people here. It can’t be that hard, ” you laughed.

“I can handle it for the last half of an hour,” he offered. “You haven’t been looking too good lately–”

“It’s getting better,” you lied before turning to the customer to take his order. “Hi! What can I get you?”

“Three glasses of Eternal Dusk, please,” a handsome man with a charming smile said, handing you his credit card. 

“Right away,” you replied with a smile, scanning the card and handing it back to him before preparing the drinks skillfully and handing them to him.

 He thanked you and took the drinks to the table where his friends were waiting for him. You thought you recognized one of them, but he quickly looked away, suddenly being very interested in the wall behind him. Over the course of the night, they kept stealing glances at you, quickly looking away and talking secretly in their tiny group. Eventually, the same guy who had ordered the drinks earlier approached the bar again.

“Another round?” you offered.

“Uh, actually–” he stopped mid-sentence with a wince and hesitantly grabbed a pendant that was hanging from a chain, tucked under his shirt. He inspected the relic suspiciously like it wasn’t his own.

“Everything okay?” you asked.

He looked at you and then back at the pendant, which he quickly hid back under his shirt. “Y-yeah sorry,” he smiled politely. “I was wondering–... you’re not from around here, are you?”

“No, I–uh, I’m from the Scarlet Islands,” you disclosed. “Why?”

“Figures. Your beauty is…definitely not something you see in this town,” he said cheekily, looking at you like he had found out your biggest secret.

“Are you going to order something or not?” Yeosang interrupted the conversation, standing in between you and the customer. 

The man smiled at Yeosang before shaking his head and waving goodbye. “I think we’re done for tonight,” he said, going to his table and hurrying his friends out of the bar.

“What a creep,” Yeosang said. 

“Y-yeah,” you chuckled nervously and started cleaning up now that the last customers were gone.

“Heeey, Sangie,” Wooyoung greeted cheerfully approaching the bar. “Can I steal Y/N away for a little bit?”

Yeosang glared at Wooyoung suspiciously. 

“It won’t be anything stupid, I promise,” Wooyung said, trying to look as innocent as possible.

“I’ll be okay, Sangie,” you chuckled, walking away with Wooyoung when Yeosang finally nodded hesitantly.

Wooyoung guided you out of the ship, to the dock that connected it to land. It was late at night and the place was deserted. The only sound you could hear was the water splashing the wooden ship and the distant voices of the crew members coming from inside the ship.

When you looked at Wooyoung you were surprised to see him taking his shirt off.

“What are you doing?” you asked, astonished.

“I’m getting undressed,” he said, unbuckling his belt.

“I can see that. Why?”

“We’re going swimming!” he exclaimed, stepping out of his pants to present himself in front of you in his underwear. “Why are you just standing there? Do you need me to take your clothes off for you?” he asked suggestively.

“Woo, it’s late…” you tried to reason.

“I’ll push you. Don’t test me.”

You saw a mischievous glint in his eyes and you couldn’t help but laugh. “Fine, I guess it won’t hurt to swim a little bit,” you said, undressing yourself until you were only wearing your bra and panties. The crew had seen you in a swimming suit before, so this was basically the same. And it was dark, so you weren’t worried about him seeing through the fabric once it got wet

You followed Wooyoung into the water and sighed at the feeling surrounding you.

“Feel good?” Wooyoung asked, apprehensively.

“Really good,” you admitted, surprised. Your body had felt heavy and ached for the last few days, but you were suddenly feeling so relieved.

“Seawater restores sirens’ vitality,” Wooyoung commented, very proud of himself. “I read about it.”

“Aaw, were you worried about me?” you teased.

He splashed water on your face as a response. You gasped and splashed him back, starting a childish battle that ended with him holding you tightly against his own body to prevent your attacks.

You were laughing brightly when you felt the soft presence of his lips on yours. It barely lasted a second, but it made all laughter stop.

Your confused eyes met Wooyoung’s untamed ones. He wasn’t laughing, nor did he seem embarrassed or regretful.

“Did that feel good too?” he asked. His voice was thick with implication.

You stared back at him, speechless.

“Don’t worry, this isn’t a love confession,” he said, gently pushing a strand of wet hair from your face. “This is just me saying that I know you’re going through a hard time, and that your body isn’t taking it well. You’re tired, in pain, and so sensitive…” he trailed off.

You blushed. “Woo–”

“I know it’s someone else that you want,” he continued. “But I can help you forget, even if it’s just for a little bit.”

“You don’t have to–”

“You think I get nothing out of it? You may not know this but I have a thing for sirens. I dated one, actually…but things didn’t end up well. I recently found out through Yeosang that she met someone knew,” he chuckled but his laugh sounded empty, hurt. “I should be happy for her. But I can’t bring myself to. Childish, huh?”

“It was you?!” you asked, astonished. “The friend Yeosang told me about–”

“She’s my ex,” Wooyoung confessed. “Well…if you could call that a relationship. We barely held hands or kissed. She was afraid if we…consummated, she would follow me wherever I went. That was smart of her; following a pirate around isn’t anyone’s dream life.”

“Woo…I’m so sorry,” you whispered sympathetically.

“You’re in no position to be sorry about someone else’s love life,” he laughed, earning a playful punch on the shoulder. “What I’m trying to say here is that none of us is with who we want to be, but we have each other…”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea…” you hesitated.

“Isn’t it tiring to have to pleasure yourself?” he taunted, caressing your waist with intent and making you shiver, suddenly very aware of the proximity and nakedness of you both. “You can’t let the man you love make you cum, and I couldn’t make the woman I loved cum…” he murmured, moving his hands skillfully to give you goosebumps. “Wouldn’t it be poetic if we cum together?”

“The mental gymnastics to get to that conclusion are out of this world,” you joked.

“Y/N,” he groaned. “We’re both lonely and horny, and we’re stuck in a lifestyle that won’t let us have a stable relationship with anyone outside this damn ship. Is it really that crazy to propose we help each other out?”

You considered it for a second. He was making sense; you couldn’t be with Chenle if you wanted to continue your current lifestyle…but Wooyoung would always be there. 

“Captain said no relationships within crew members,” you murmured, holding onto the last argument against this reckless idea.

“Captain doesn’t need to know,” he assured you, closing the distance between your lips and kissing you. You kissed him back, focusing on Wooyoung and trying to forget all about Chenle. Without knowing that you would see him sooner than expected.

“CHENLE!” Kun yelled, bursting into the depressed wolf’s room and yanking the covers away from his limp body. “YOU STUPID BOY!”

After getting over the initial shock, Chenle gave him an unamused glare. “We already established that. No need to yell,” he murmured, reaching for the cover again.

Kun took the cover from his hand and threw it on the floor. He then unclasped from around his neck a golden chain with a doubloon hanging from it and waved it in front of Chenle’s face. “Do you know what this is?” 

“No,” deadpanned Chenle.

“It’s a siren detector,” he replied proudly.

“Why do you even have one of those?” Chenle asked, still uninterested.

“I got it from my time in the navy, of course. All sailors get one for safety.”

“Pff, you were not in the navy,” Chenle scoffed.

“Yes, I was? I sent you postcards?” Kun reminded him offendedly. “Whatever, that’s not the point. The point is we went to the bar where your mate works—“

“You did WHAT?!” Chenle asked outrageously. 

“We were going to convince her to take you back,” Kun continued.

“Nooo,” Chenle groaned, mortified. “How did you even know which bar it was?”

“Jisung led the way,” Kun informed.

Chenle glared at Jisung who was standing awkwardly next to Renjun.

“Sorry,” Jisung mumbled. “Didn’t want you to be sad…”

Chenle sighed. “You should have asked me— did you steal that glass?”

Jisung looked at the glass he was holding, still half full of alcohol. “We left in a hurry and I kinda panicked.”

“As I was saying,” Kun demanded everyone’s attention. “Whenever I got near your mate the detector started burning my skin. I asked her where she was from and she named an island that is located in the Forbidden Sea, which is where you can find  the biggest population of merpeople.”

Chenle stared at him dumbly.

“You imprinted on a siren!” Kun exclaimed exasperatedly. “Well, probably a half-siren…she seems to be able to spend long periods of time on land.”

“…That’s ridiculous. I would have noticed if my mate had a fishtail.”

“I guess they don’t teach you guys anatomy in school anymore,” Kun said. “That’s a myth. Sirens look like any other human. Some historical jerk assumed they had tails because the lower part of their bodies often remained hidden under the water. They have legs just like us, and they sometimes come to land, but they need sea water to survive. My guess is Y/N gets easy access to the water by traveling with pirates.”

“But… it can’t be…”

“It makes perfect sense,” Renjun interjected. “Sirens are famous for their mind control. Think about it: isn’t it weird that you always agreed to everything she said?”

Again, Chenle glared at Jisung, who must have spilled the beans about that too.

 “I don’t know, man,” he sighed tiredly. “Maybe I’m just a simp.”

“No but—“ Jisung spoke nervously. “That night when you met her you were so out of it. All you kept saying was that you didn’t want to mark her. Isn’t that weird?”

Chenke knitted his brows. It was kind of weird. “Maybe it was the fever.”

“Just try to remember,” Renjun insisted. “Did you ever have any disagreement that ended with you saying something out of character? Something that you didn’t understand why you were saying?”

Chenle froze. Every encounter with you had ended like that. Suddenly it all made sense.

Holy fuck. He had been played.

 He groaned and pulled his hair. “So Y/N is a master manipulator. Why does it matter? She doesn’t want to see me.”

”That’s the weird part,” Kun says hurriedly. “I heard her speaking with the other bartender, saying something about not seeing her mate for a week. Your relationship,” he said that word making air quotes with his hands, “ended a week ago. So that has to be referring to you, right? That means she imprinted on you too. But if that’s really the case then she wouldn’t be able to stand being away from you after you guys slept together,” he ranted nonsensically. 

Chenle wasn’t really following. He was still trying to process that he imprinted on a siren, and now Kun was saying that you probably imprinted on him too. He didn’t even know sirens imprinted.

“Maybe sexual relationships aren’t that important for her,” Renjun said, trying to make sense of the situation. 

“Sex is a sacred ritual between siren mates,” Kun contradicted Renjun’s theory. “When a siren is brought to their climax by the one they imprinted on it’s game over. The bond is sealed for eternity. Seriously, guys, what are they teaching you in school?”

“Not how to mate with sirens, clearly,” Renjun replied sarcastically, making Jisung choke on his drink.

“Orgasms seal the bond…” Chenle mumbled, sitting up as he pieced together everything he heard. “Game over…”

“Exactly,” Kun said, excited that at least one of them was paying attention and learning from him. “But then she probably wasn’t talking about you when she mentioned a mate because she shouldn’t be able to live without you after two months of–” 

“I didn’t make her cum,” Chenle admitted.

The room was silent.

“You mean– last time you were together?” Renjun offered.

“Ever,” Chenle deadpanned.

Jisung gasped. “You never told me that!” he accused.

“Yeah, thank god, or you would have told everyone!” Chenle rolled his eyes.

“I get nervous when interrogated!” Jisung defended himself.

“Chenle!” Kun shrieked. “Are you saying that in two months of being fuckbuddies,” he stressed, “ you didn’t make her cum once?!”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Chenle replied.

“Right,” Renjun said sarcastically.

“She kept telling me that I wasn’t good enough. That I didn’t deserve to touch her!” Chenle huffed, incredulous at what he was learning. “Whenever she was about to cum she would stop me with that sickeningly sweet voice of hers–”

“The siren voice,” Kun nodded, starting to understand what was happening.

“And I would always end up doing as she said and–I don’t know I thought it was like a weird kink of hers, or that I really was that bad in bed,” Chenle groaned. 

“She was stopping you from consummating the bond,” Renjun breathed out, catching up.

“Wait what?” Jisung asked.

“She imprinted on Chenle and she knew if he made her orgasm  she would be bonding with him forever,” Kun explained. “She literally hypnotized him to make sure he never made her cum.”

“That’s a whole new level of commitment issues…” Jisung said incredulously. “And gaslighting,” he added,  not believing that someone would go that far. 

But Chenle didn’t doubt you would do all that and more to get what you wanted. You were literally insane.  

“Fucking bitch,” he grunted, getting out of bed and exiting the room.

“Where are you going?” Jisung asked.

“Where do you think?!” Chenle yelled back.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Renjun warned, running after him, followed by Jisung and Kun.

“You either wait here or you come with, but you’re not stopping me,” Chenle grunted, opening the front door and walking out of the house in his pajamas.

The three werewolves exchanged worried looks before following Chenle to his car. Kun ended up driving because Chenle’s hands were shaking with rage, and the car was barely parked near the port when Chenle sprinted toward the imposing ship. 

The bar was closed, and everyone was probably asleep, but Chenle didn’t give a damn. He was going to wake up the entire town if he had to.

But he didn’t have to, because he heard you.

It was distant and weak. You were giggling and whimpering, and at some point, he even thought he heard his name. But where–?

He almost tripped when he stepped on…pants? And there were other pieces of clothing too– Was that your top?!

“You okay?” asked an unfamiliar male voice.

“F-fine,” you croaked.

“That good, huh?” the stranger asked.

“Shut up,” you replied playfully.

The voices were getting closer and Chenle’s enhanced vision could see you swimming toward the dock…with a man. 

“It must have been good,” the man insisted. “You were so out of it that you called me a totally different name.”

“Woo,” you whined, ashamed. “I’m sorry–” 

He pecked your lips. “It’s fine,” he assured you with a smile, reaching for the wooden surface. “You’ll get it right next time–,” his sentence was interrupted when out of nowhere someone grabbed him and pulled him out of the water aggressively. 

Your eyes widened in fear when you saw Chenle, manhandling Wooyoung with murderous intent. The pirate landed on his back on the dock with a loud thud and winced, but that was only the beginning of the pain Chenle had planned for him. 

“C-chenle!” you shrieked, getting out of the water. “Chenle, stop!”

“I’ll deal with you later,” he growled at you, getting back to beating the shit out of the man who had dared to kiss you.

Desperately, you yelled at him to stop, tried to pull him away from Wooyoung, and finally screamed for help, hoping at least one of your crew members would hear you.

Luckily, Yunho came running out of the ship, closely followed by Mingi, who looked half-asleep. They quickly assessed the situation and charged in to separate the two men. San and Yeosang joined the scene right after, helping Wooyoung get up and trying to get him away from the threat.

“I’ll teach you not to touch what isn’t yours,” Chenle growled, breaking free from Yunho and Mingi’s grasp, but thankfully Kun, Renjun and a terrified Jisung stepped in, not letting him reach the poor man. 

“Leave right now or I’ll call the police,” Seongwha spoke authoritatively, standing between his crew and the werewolves.

“Call the police then!” Chenle challenged petulantly. “See if I care. One of my pack is fucking a police officer so they can’t do shit to us–” he suddenly fell on the floor completely unconscious. Behind him, there was Jongho.

“I hit a pressure point so he’ll be asleep for a bit,” Jongho explained calmly. “Not for long though, so you should get him out of here fast.”

The three werewolves nodded quickly, and mumbled a thousand apologies while they grabbed his unconscious pack member and dragged him away. 

Seungwha quickly instructed the crew to take Wooyoung inside and tend to his wounds before turning to you. “Y/N, Captain wants to see you.”

The crew turned to look at you, failing to mask the fear in their eyes. They knew that if the Captain asked you to go to his cabin, it meant you were in huge trouble.

You lowered your head and nodded obediently, grabbing your clothes and boarding the ship. You quickly dried your body and put on some clothes before walking to the Captain’s cabin with trembling legs.

“Come in,” he said before you could even knock.

The antique door opened with a quiet squeak.

Captain Hongjoong was standing by a small window while playfully tossing his spyglass from one hand to the other.

“Did you ask to see me?” you asked nervously.

“I did,” he hummed calmly. “Had fun with Wooyoung?”

Your blood ran cold. There was no way he could have found out this fast, could he?

He chuckled. “Come here, Y/N.”

You took hesitant steps toward him until you were face to face.

“Look outside” he instructed,positioning so you were looking out the window. “What do you see?”

You saw the dock where the fight had happened and if you moved a bit to the right you could see the exact spot where you and Wooyoung had been fooling around. Could he have seen–?

“Saw it all,” he purred next to your ear, answering your unvoiced question. “Can’t say I’m surprised. If someone was going to break that rule it was Wooyoung.”

“It wasn’t his fault–”

“Please,” Hongjoong laughed, sitting on a chair made out of a barrel. “You want me to believe that Wooyoung wasn’t the one who started this? I know my crew,” he said, gesturing at the chair in front of him for you to take a seat too.

“He was only trying to help,” you explained, sitting down.

“Yeah, because you broke up with rich boy, right? Maybe if you hadn’t used your siren voice on him things wouldn’t have ended like that.”

You gasped in surprise. He knew about that?! 

He gasped too, mocking you. “Told you, Y/N. I know my crew,” he informed you, changing his tone to a more serious one. “Relationships within the crew are a rule that could be bent if necessary… but I strictly forbade you from bewitching people.”

“I–I know…”

“Wooyoung and you hooked up, alright, no problem. You’re both adults. But what you did to that man,” he said pointing at the window, “was take away his autonomy for your benefit.”

You nodded slowly, ashamed. 

“I’ve been waiting to see if you would solve things on your own, but now one of my men is hurt. You did that,” he accused.

You winced. “I understand. I’ll pack my things,” you said.

Hongjoong frowned.“Why would you do that?”

“I broke the rules and I put the crew in danger. So I gotta leave, right?”

“That would be the easy way out,” he said sternly. “You can’t abandon people whenever you fail them.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Apologize.”

“I’m sorry,” you said immediately.

“Not to me. To Chenle Zhong.”

Wow. He even knew his full name.

“I ended things with him,” you explained.

“But did you apologize?”

“He’ll move on and find someone better.”

“Did.you.apologize?”

You sighed in defeat. “...No.”

“Do it,” he commanded. “In person.”

You nodded right when someone knocked on the door softly.

“Come in,” Hongjoong said.

Seongwha walked in. “Wooyoung will be fine. Only a few bruises, but no broken bones.”

“Good,” Hongjoong sighed. “Tell him he’s grounded.”

“Of course,”  Seongwha said, but shot you a worried look. “What about Y/N?”

“She has her own task to complete, isn’t that right?” he said, looking at you solemnly.

And that’s how you found yourself unblocking Chenle and texting him, asking him if you could meet. The message showed as read for hours until he finally replied setting a time and date.

He picked you up like he often did in the past, before shit hit the fan. At first you refused to get in the car.

“I’ll be quick,” you said.

“I won’t,” he countered angrily. “I have a lot to say, and you’re gonna listen. Get in.”

His voice left no room for disobedience, so you nervously got in the car. This time he drove in a totally different direction. 

“Where are we going?” you asked.

He didn’t reply. He remained silent even when the car stopped in front of a huge modern building, taking you into the elevator and, once again, pressing the button to go to the highest floor. 

You were in awe when you entered a place as luxurious as the presidential suite, but more homelike. It was a spacious penthouse, with minimum decoration, like it had been recently purchased, with enormous windows that allowed you to see the ocean.

“I’m listening,” Chenle said dryly, standing in front of the window and watching the striking view.

You stood behind him, taking a deep breath in to brace yourself. “There’s something you must know,” you started saying.

He kept his eyes on the view, waiting for you to continue.

“I’m part siren. Sirens can control people’s minds with their voices…and I did that to you.”

He clenched his jaw but remained silent, 

“Everytime you came too close I made you believe that you didn’t actually want that. I treated you like shit to keep you under control, but the truth was that I was afraid of what would happen if we went further. I’m sorry,” you finally said. 

He turned around, glaring at you. “You’re sorry? Do you think you can use and humiliate someone repeatedly and then just say you’re sorry?”

You shook your head. “I know what I did was awful. That’s why I ended things; so you can forget about me and move on.”

“That’s your way of fixing things?” He laughed humorlessly. “Imagine someone broke your leg and then they put a fucking sticker on it, telling you to forget about it. Can you go run a marathon?”

“...That’s not the same–”

“That’s what it felt like to me,” he insisted. “You broke me every time you told me I didn’t deserve you. Everytime you made me say what we had wasn’t special. You don’t get to step on me like that and then tell me to move on.”

“I’m trying to do what’s right.”

“No. You’re doing what’s easier.” 

“Chenle I–,” you sighed. “I’m leaving in three days. There’s nothing I can do for you at this point.”

He met your gaze with eyes that reflected a storm of emotions. 

“There’s something,” he said firmly. “Kiss me.”

A shiver ran down your spine. There was nothing you would like more than to kiss him. “Wouldn’t that make things worse?” you asked apprehensive.

“The person I imprinted on used me for months and is leaving in 3 days. Things can’t possibly get worse for me,” Chenle deadpanned. He stared at your lips and took one of your hands tenderly. “Can you let me have just one moment with you that feels real? Without the lies and the mind games?”

You breathed out against his lips. “O-okay…”

Chenle’s lips were on yours, slow and hot. You felt like you were floating. It had been so long since the last time you were this close to him, you had forgotten how well his lips fit into yours, how gratifying his body felt against yours, how easily he could turn you on with his fingertips barely grazing your skin.

You couldn’t remember why you turned down his touch in the past when it was clearly what you needed the most–even the body ache you had woken up with was subsiding thanks to his ministrations.

It was the little moan that escaped you what brought you back to reality by the time he had taken your shirt off and was kissing your chest while playing with the strap of your bra.

“Chenle,” you moaned when he unclasped your bra and attached his lips to your tits. “I t-think we should stop now–”

He ignored your concerns, sucking on your nipple languidly. 

“Ooh– Chenle I’m serious,” you started to panic at how dangerously good you were starting to feel. With how sensitive you were since you imprinted on him and how much you had been craving for him it wouldn’t take long for you to climax…and that’s a luxury you couldn’t afford if you were to leave with the crew in a couple of days.

“Don’t be like that,” he cooed, unbuttoning your jeans. “You hardly ever allowed me to touch you during our encounters. You can’t expect me to be satisfied with just a kiss when this could be the last time I see you.”

“T-then how about I make y-you feel good instead?” you offered nervously, trying to pull his hands away from you, but he quickly slapped your hands away.

“I don’t think so. We did things your way many times already. It’s my turn to make you cum,” he declared, pulling your pants down hastily.

“NO! WAIT!” you shrieked, grabbing his hands with all your strength.

Chenle stared into your eyes intently. “There’s that terrified expression again,” he uttered. “It’s almost like you don’t want to cum. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?” he taunted. “Unless there’s something you aren’t telling me…”

You gulped.You indeed hadn’t told him you imprinted on him and what the consequences of an orgasm would be. “I…I just–That’s n-not why I came here–”

“What’s so terrifying about me making you cum, hmm?” he inquired darkly, like he already knew the answer, cornering you against the window glass. “If you don’t give me a good reason I won’t stop.”

You couldn’t tell him, because if you did then you were 100% sure he wouldn’t stop. You didn’t want to do this again, but you didn’t see any other way out right now.

“Pup, listen to me–” you spoke sweetly but he clasped his hand on your mouth firmly.

“No, you won’t,” he spoke through gritted teeth. “You apologize for bewitching me, but you try to do it again the second things don’t go as you planned?” he asked incredulously. 

You squirmed but he didn't budge.

Chenle hummed, placing his free hand on the front of your neck and tracing his fingers over your throat, drawing what felt like random figures. “What a shame. That was your last chance.” 

You gasped for air when he finally uncovered your mouth, but when you tried to speak again no words came out.

You cleared your throat and opened your mouth again, but even though you were saying words, they didn’t materialize into sounds.

You looked at Chenle in shock, and he smirked back at you.

“It’s not nice, huh? Not being able to say what you want,” he asked rhetorically.

‘What did you do?!’ you tried to ask, but of course once again nothing came out of your mouth. 

Chenle understood your voiceless question though and he chuckled. “Here goes my first confession: I found out about what you were a few days ago. I’ve been thinking of ways to stop you from using that voice on me since then. At first I thought about choking you, but I was so fucking mad at you I was afraid I would end up breaking your neck, so I learned how to cast this little spell on your vocal chords.”

Your eyes widened, remembering how you thought that he was just caressing your neck seconds ago.

“I also know you imprinted on me,” he continued speaking, caressing your face. “And I know what will happen if I make you cum so, naturally, I will make it happen.”

Your instinct kicked in and you pushed him, trying to get away as fast as you could, but he quickly caught you and turned you around, pushing you against the window glass with him hugging you from behind. You shivered when the cold material made contact with your bare chest, and the beautiful city view reminded you of how embarrassingly exposed you were.

Chenle’s hand had already found its way into your panties, and he was pleasuring you skillfully and fast, with only one objective in mind.

“Here goes my second confession: I regret not killing that friend of yours,” he whispered next to your ear, while two of his fingers were buried inside of you. “Can’t believe you let him have you like this before me. It drove me mad to find out what you sound like when you’re cumming while in another man’s arms. But what made me even more furious was that you moaned my name. How fucking shameless can you be?”

You wanted to dig a hole and hide in it forever, but first you needed to run away.

He clicked his tongue when you kicked your leg back aimlessly trying to get him off you. “You’re being so rude when I’m making you feel so good you’re dripping down my hand?” He asked, adding a third finger and making you tighten around him.

You shook your head and tried to look at him over your shoulder, giving him your best puppy eyes.

“Do you really want me to stop?” he asked, stilling his fingers inside of you.

You nodded promptly.

He sighed. “I guess I should respect your wishes just like you respected mine–Oh, right,” he pretended to suddenly remember something important. “You didn’t,” he concluded, fucking his fingers into you fast and hard.

You would have screamed if you could. You were so close and it was both marvelous and horrifying. If you gave in it would change your life forever, so you tried to even your breath and will yourself to think of something else.

“Would you look at that?” Chenle taunted. “I can see your ship from here…It’s a shame they’re too far to see how much of an obedient girl you’re being for me, taking my fingers so well, about to give yourself to me completely.”

You did not want anyone to see you like this, but you tried to remind yourself that this penthouse was on the highest floor in an exclusive neighborhood. Surely no one could see you.

“Mm…should I bite you before or after I get you off?” Chenle asked, placing a wet kiss on your neck.

You squirmed helplessly. At this point you knew you wouldn’t break free, and that your efforts were in vain, but you were too stubborn to accept your fate.

“I’m tired of waiting,” he said, abusing that spot that had you rolling your eyes while using his other hand to rub your clit roughly. “Give it to me now.”

Your ears rang and the city lights in front of you became blurry. You felt like the world was spinning around you while the tingly feeling that sometimes you experienced in your fingertips expanded through your body. 

‘Chenle, Chenle, Chenle’ was the only thought in your mind. His firm hands on your body, his warm respiration on your neck, his expensive cologne invading your nostrils, his luscious voice murmuring words you couldn’t comprehend right now–he was everywhere. The feeling was so overwhelming, unlike any orgasm any man had ever given you before. There was no way back now. You were–

“All mine,” Chenle chuckled, removing his hands from your underwear and placing one of them on your throat to remove the spell. “Was that really so bad?” he asked, turning you around to face him.

You glared at him. “Y-you–,” you coughed and spoke shakily, still riding the neverending aftershoks of your orgasm. “Do you k-know what you just d-did?!”

“I’m fully aware,” he replied nonchalantly.

“I won’t be able to leave, you asshole!” you yelled at him as tears started forming in your eyes. “You ruined my life!”

The hand that was on your neck squeezed your throat.

“Like I said, I know what I did. That’s why I did it,” he grunted. “And just for your information, I only reversed the spell to hear you moan. Not for you to get bratty and annoying, so if you try to bewitch me or yell at me one more time you won’t be speaking until the end of my rut.”

You paled. “Y-your rut?!” you choked out.

“Third confession,” Chenle whispered against your lips. “I chose this night to meet because my rut is scheduled to start anytime soon. And you’re gonna help me through it.”

You kicked his leg just out of pettiness. You knew it probably didn’t hurt much and it wouldn’t get you out of this predicament, but you didn’t know how else to voice your anger.

He gave you an unamused look. “That’s it,” he growled, lifting you in his arms and throwing you over his shoulder unceremoniously. You squirmed, kicked, and hit whatever part of him you could reach but it only seemed to add to the punishment that was coming. 

He opened the door to a bedroom, which was also surrounded by wide windows. Like the living room, it wasn’t fully furnished or decorated, but there was a king size bed in the middle and a nightstand, which was all that Chenle needed right now. 

He sat on the bed and manhandled you so you were lying on your belly on his lap, and before you had the chance to ask anything or complain you felt a sharp pain on your ass.

“You’re going to behave,” he guaranteed, landing another slap that made you gasp. “Even if I have to force you to.”

You tried to keep your mouth shut. If he had reversed the spell because he wanted to hear you moan then you wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing a single sound from you.

After spanking you a couple more times he noticed what you were trying to pull.

“Really?” he asked, giving you a particularly hard smack that almost made you give in. “We’ll see about that,” he murmured.

He moved you onto the bed, removed your panties hastily and positioned you so your legs were hanging off the bed while still on your belly. You turned your head around suspiciously but you didn’t see him. You were going to sit up when you felt a pair of firm hands gripping your asscheeks and something warm and wet grazing your inner labia. 

You yelped and Chenle chuckled against your center before diving in.

It had been a long time since someone ate you out from behind; usually you were the one in charge, so being in such a compromising position was humiliating yet he was making you feel so good…

No. You couldn’t let him know you were enjoying this. You bit your lip and grasped onto the bed sheets desperately.

His tongue slid inside of you and he landed another slap on your ass, feeling you clench around the wet muscle. He pulled away for a second to say some cheeky comment, but a malicious kick almost landed on his face.

Furiously, he stood up and climbed on the bed, grabbing you as you were crawling away and forcing you to turn around to face him.

“What the fuck was that?” he growled. 

“Fuck you!” you hissed in response.

“Fucking brat,” he spat, unbuckling his belt and straddling you. “After all you’ve done you think you have the right to be angry?”

“Oh and you’re any better?” you asked indignantly. “You forced an orgasm out of me even though you knew what that implied–”

“Agreed,” he conceded, unbuttoning his pants. “We’re both terrible people and now we’re stuck together, so you might as well get used to it–”

“I may be bonded to you but you don’t own me! I’m sure Yeosang can help me find a way to undo this–Hhmp!” your ranting was interrupted by Chenle grabbing your jaw firmly and  shoving his cock in your mouth, absolutely not in the mood to listen anymore.

“Mm, yeah that’s better,” he hummed, thrusting the head of his cock in and out slowly. “Such a beautiful voice but all that comes out of your mouth is poisonous.”

You tried to complain, but the vibrations only pleased Chenle even more. 

“Yeah, go on, princess,” he encouraged you mockingly, sinking some more of his length into your mouth. 

You shot him a dirty look and hollowed your cheeks to give a hard suck, tasting the salty liquid that the tip oozed.

He moaned and his body bent in pleasure. “Oh yeah?” he sneered, pulling out slightly to thrust back in. “Do your worst, princess, fuck–”

“Hmm,” you moaned around him, stretching your lips and straining your neck to bob your head. 

Chenle felt like his head was spinning. You had pleasured him with your mouth before, but this was different. He had never had so much power over you. It made him feel euphoric. He placed his hands on your head to keep you in place, pulling your hair unintentionally. His mouth hung slack and he fucked your mouth rhythmically.

It took you choking when his cock hit the back of your throat for him to cum in your mouth with a guttural moan, trapping your head between his pelvis and the mattress until you drank every single drop.

With a jaded sigh, he climbed off your chest to start going lower, kissing every corner of your body on the way until he positioned himself with his face between your legs to continue what he had started.

You let out a broken moan when he captured your clit with his mouth and sucked insistently. 

Your legs kicked his back and you pulled his hair angrily but you couldn’t refrain from moaning, much to his delight.  He sucked, and sucked until the stimulation was painful, and almost wished he moved his mouth somewhere else but he was suctioning your clit with obsessive intent, wanting it to feel so good it hurt, wanting to break you.

He alternated between flattening his tongue against you while shaking his head and going back to harsh sucking until your stomach contorts and your mind goes blank, making your legs shake in pleasure.

…Except he doesn’t stop. 

It was the first time he had you cum in his mouth and now he was captivated. He wished you had let him do this sooner. How dare you keep this away from him all this time?! 

“Do it again,” he grumbled against your core  between sloppy licks.

“Are y-haa…are you insane?!” you whined, trying to push him away.

He looked up at you with reddened eyes and growled, slapping your inner thigh.

“I said,” he spoke roughly. “Do it again,” he commanded, getting back to work.

This time he was all over the place, licking and slurping every drop of your release and making you shriek in pleasure and embarrassment. He wouldn’t let any of it go to waste. This belonged to him. You belonged to him. And he would take it as many times as he wanted.

You trembled when he once again focused your clit, like it was his new favorite toy, and circled it with his tongue going clockwise and then counterclockwise, and then flicking it barely with the tip of his tongue.

You whined and the death grip you had on his hair to push him away ended up pushing his head closer to your center.

He moaned appreciatively and let you fuck his face until he heard you gasp brokenly, so he sucked hard, bringing you to yet another orgasm. 

Your body relaxed on the bed while he cleaned you up with his tongue languidly, making you wince and convulse sporadically. 

Once he finally licked all he could find, he climbed back up so he was face to face with you.

“I hate you,” you croaked.

“Yeah?” he purred, kissing you, letting you taste yourself on his lips. “I don’t think you do…And even if you did, that’s too bad, because I’m obsessed with you,” he concluded, diving in for another kiss.

He was right, you didn’t hate him. You were just mad, and scared, but you loved his lips on yours, and the way his body rocked against yours, and his hard cock pushing against your entrance–

“Ah–haaa, fuck–Chenle!” you moaned loudly when he pushed in slowly, stretching you out delightfully. 

He swallowed your moans with his kisses, between hushed praises for taking him so well. 

“My pretty princess…” he breathed out once he bottomed up completely. He grabbed one of your thighs and pushed it up and outwards before rolling his hips experimentally. He starts very slowly, allowing you to feel every vein of his cock dragging against your inner walls and you have no words to describe how good it feels.

His eyes lit up when he hit a spot that made you arch your back, aiming to hit it harder.

“What happened to that fierce attitude?” he teased when you let out a strangled moan.

You only looked at him with wide eyes, grabbing onto his shoulders clumsily without knowing what to do with yourself. Having him inside of you after having consummated the bond made everything feel 10 times more intense. There was nothing you could possibly say to express how good it felt to have your mate’s cock kissing your cervix so divinely. 

“Poor Y/N,” Chenle spoke condescendingly, using his thumb to wipe some drool off the corner of your mouth. “Cock so good you can’t speak?”

You try to think of a comeback. You really do, but how could you when he was filling you all the way up and hitting all the right places–at the same time?

He chuckled darkly, snapping his hips hard once, twice and then building up a steady rhythm that had you screaming like he always wanted you to.

“Oh g-god…” was the first coherent sentence you said, throwing your head back.

 “That’s my princess,” he praised, pressing his face into the crook of your neck. “Submitting for her mate–haa…,” he moaned as he nosed along your neck, looking for the right spot to leave his mark.

“C-chenle–” you whined, feeling yourself getting closer the more his pelvis grinded against your clit.

He sank his teeth into your skin and you felt that white pleasure consume you again, making you cum with a silent scream and your legs shake around Chenle’s waist.

He winced when you contracted around his cock, murmuring nonsense about how tight and perfect you were for him while licking the fresh wound on your neck.

You were shaking like a leaf, whispering his name like it was the only thing you knew and he just didn’t stop.

“Fuck! P-please!” you cried out when he pressed his hips against yours harshly and moved them in a circular way before resuming his unrelenting assault. 

You didn’t think you could take any more so you tried to push him away weakly, but he pinned you down by your wrists. 

Both of you knew you weren’t actually trying to rebel anymore, but his wolf loved to show off his strength, making you submit. He had wanted to dominate you the moment he met you, but his rut had turned that want into a need. 

“C-can’t,” you sobbed, but the more you squirmed, the harder he fucked you.

“You’re g-gonna take it,” he grunted, squeezing your wrists and thrusting fast enough to make you see stars. 

Tears slid down your face but you nodded obediently and that sent Chenle into a frenzy. He let go of your wrists to grab onto your waist, sitting up and ramming into you at a speed he didn’t know he was capable of.

“Aah…Haa, fuck, Y/N–my obedient little mate, yeah…” he moaned.

You whined at the praise, letting him fuck every coherent thought out of your head.

“All you have t-to do is take it,” he spoke with slurred words as he impaled you into his cock like a ragdoll. “Let me have you like this,” he emphasized the last word with a hard thrust. “Let me m-make you feel good mm…”

You nodded dumbly while he pounded you on the bed.

“Look this pretty–oh fuck, so pretty for me,” he sounded strained, and his movements were haltering. “Let me g-give you anything you could…oooh anything y-you could possibly want,” he was getting desperate, feeling his knot starting to form was pushing him over the edge. “L-let me…,” he gulped, forcing his knot into you and making you scream. “Oooh Y/N, fuuuck–”

You couldn’t breathe. It was too much. He was too deep, and he was trying to pull you impossibly closer as his cock throbbed inside of you and he finally came with a shaky sigh, shooting endless spurts of cum inside of you.

Your eyes rolled back as he convulsed on top of you, once again pinning your wrists just for show, to remind you he was in charge.

Once both of you came down from your high, Chenle took in the view and beamed with pride. 

You were sprawled out on your back, with his mark on your neck, fucked dumb, submissive, completely overstimulated, impaled on his cock, and full of what soon would be his pups. 

This was what he would wake up to everyday, in this very apartment he had bought for both of you.

Meanwhile, on the ship, Captain Hongjoong put his spyglass down and walked away from the window, letting out an impressed whistle.

“Seongwha, make preparations for a farewell party,” he requested, sitting on his chair and putting his feet on the table. “Looks like Y/N’s staying in this town.”

“You’re so mean,” Seongwha replied, unimpressed. “You knew this would happen when you sent her to speak with him.”

“She’ll thank me one day,” Hongjoong assured him, winking playfully.

[moonlinos]

Invisible string (pt. III)

♡ Pairing: Lee Minho × fem!reader

♡ Synopsis: After so many years of being closed off from the idea of love, you finally allow yourself to feel it freely with Minho.

♡ Genre: A ‘lite version’ of a soulmate AU, fluff, smut

♡ CW: Explicit sexual content (minors dni!), oral sex (female receiving), protected sex, swearing

♡ Word count: 16.4k

♡ A/N: A part of this chapter was almost shamelessly inspired by the song that inspired the plot in the first place, Invisible String by Taylor Swift. Also really inspired by my favorite Minho vlog, Lee Know Log 4 🩷

To those who have asked to be tagged in this story: would any of you be interested in being tagged in any new work I post later? Let me know! And thank you for reading and giving me such a great experience posting my writing here for the first time 🩷

← part II ♡ ⟳ part I

You spend the entire flight home processing everything that had happened during the trip; from Minho’s words, to your kisses and touches, to you ultimately acknowledging your own romantic feelings for him. Although it all felt sudden, it had been a long time coming.

As his car stops at the front of your house, Minho steps out and walks with you, your backpack in hand.

“I know you’re scared. I understand that even more now that I know about your past relationships,” he speaks softly as the two of you stop at the front door, “And I want you to know that I’m gonna be patient.”

You nod slowly, although the desire to answer him is still so prevalent in your mind, the words lodged in your throat and yearning to spill out. But you’ve made the mistake of jumping into relationships far too often, always driven by your emotions, and every time, the outcome has been disastrous. You don’t want that to happen with Minho.

So, you settle on a question that has been eating away at you.

“Why do you like me, Minho?”

His face twists into a deep frown before ultimately softening. Carefully placing your backpack on the step leading to the front door, he sighs.

“You shouldn’t have to ask me that,” he assures you, his rough hands touching your shoulders before moving down your arms to entwine with your own. “You don’t even realize how fucking amazing you are, do you? I’d move mountains, fight anyone and do anything if it meant I’d have the privilege to see you smile.”

And, just like that, you feel your lips stretch out into a small smile at his words. He grins at you.

“Just like that. I’d do anything to see that,” he says. “And you take care of your friends simply because you love them, never asking for anything in return. You collect plushies like me, you appreciate the criminally underrated flavor of lemon cake, and you worked at the same convenience store as me, and spilled coffee all over my notebook on the day we met. That’s why I like you; because you’re you.”

Tears threaten to well up in your eyes, so you quickly avert your gaze, focusing on your shoes. With a nod, you wrap your arms around Minho, taking in his scent and reveling in the comforting warmth of his body. Little did he know, you were just as willing to do whatever it took to keep him near you. He plants a chaste kiss on your forehead as you break away from his embrace.

“I’ll call you later, okay? Thank you for the trip.”

 

As soon as you step inside your house, Eunha is quick to come running towards you, her hands dirty with flour as she abandons her unbaked cookies on the counter and pulls you into a hug.

“I missed you so much,” she whines, “How will I survive living without you next year?”

You chuckle, watching as her lips turn into a pout.

“I’m sure we’ll suffer equally, if that makes you feel better.”

She fakes a sob, turning on her heels and heading toward the kitchen.

“Oh, Hyunjin is in a crisis, apparently,” she tells you, wiping her hands on her apron. “He called me three times just today to ask if you were back already.”

You let out a sigh. Hyunjin was more often than not either glum or vexed due to his trials and mishaps in finding love. He once joked that you two would end up having to marry each other with how things were going. You dreaded his reaction to the news of Minho soon entering your life in a new way.

“The hotel’s Wi-Fi was a joke, but I honestly didn’t even think to check my phone,” you tell Eunha, who giggles as she cuts her cookies into heart shapes. “What? Why are you giggling like that?” You ask her with a grin, approaching the counter.

She shrugs. “Nothing. I didn’t even think to check my phone,” she playfully mimics your voice, looking up at you, “I’m guessing you had fun, then?”

“I did,” you beam, “It was everything I thought it would be and even more.”

She raises an eyebrow at you. “Even more?”

“Even more,” you reiterate. “I had so much fun with Minho. I forgot how good it feels to just let go and allow myself to feel what I want to feel.”

Eunha’s lips curl into a small smile. She hums, lowering her head in a feeble attempt at pretending to focus on the cookies in front of her. “And what did you want to feel this weekend?”

“Like maybe I can finally fall in love again.”

Your friend lifts her head, her eyes wide. “Love?” she exclaims, “You, the girl who has spent every day since I met you talking about how love isn’t important, is wanting to fall in love?”

You chuckle at her reaction, shrugging dismissively. “In my defense, I had my reasons. Plus, some things made me change my mind.”

“More like someone,” Eunha teases, and you roll your eyes at her, but a smile spreads on your lips unwittingly. “I’m happy for you,” she beams, “and I think you should definitely fall in love again — not maybe.”

You sprint across the small kitchen space, circling around the counter to wrap your arms around Eunha and squeezing her as she lightly pushes you away, warning you about flour getting all over your clothes, but you don’t mind.

Because you love her, as you’ve learned this past weekend, and you don’t mind the mess when it comes to someone you love.

It’s only as you enter your room that you check your phone, which is filled with notifications from Hyunjin, much like Eunha had said. After ten missed calls, it seems he resorted to simply texting you.

Hyune: hey I know you’re in japan but can you answer the phone? Hyune: I promise I’ll be quick. just wanna talk to you Hyune: hear your voice idk I feel really alone rn and really bad idk lol Hyune: mingyu has his girlfriend over. can you believe they’re still together? Hyune: can you believe he has a girlfriend and I can’t even find someone to give me the time of day lol Hyune: can you believe every date I go to ends with me crying lol Hyune: sorry I’m being annoying and the messages aren’t even being delivered, you’re clearly having fun sorry Hyune: sorry Hyune: guess that’s why nobody can endure me for more than two dates Hyune: have fun 🤍 I love you

You feel your heart ache as you read his messages, answering with an apology. But before you can hit send on your second message, Hyunjin has already replied. 

Hyune: it’s okay. I’m sorry I even sent those in the first place

Me: Stop apologizing Me: You know I love you and I’ll always be here for you Me: Where are you?

Hyune: at my dorm Hyune: staring at the ceiling

Me: I’m coming over

True to his words, Hyunjin is lying on the floor of his dorm’s cramped living room once you open the door. There’s a small canvas propped up against the wall, a myriad of shades of blue forming the shape of a face. Your best friend’s talent never ceases to amaze you, and you have to fight the urge to stand still by the front door for a few seconds simply admiring his new painting.

“Look at this sulking Pisces,” you click your tongue as you approach Hyunjin, who only opens one eye to shoot you a glance.

“I’m in a fragile state and this is how you greet me,” he all but pouts before sitting up as you sit cross-legged beside him on the floor. “How was the trip?”

You shrug. “It was fun. We only had one day to explore the city, so we didn’t do much,” you say simply, tapping your fingers on your thigh.

You don’t want to sit and talk about how much fun you had during a trip when Hyunjin’s puffy, bloodshot eyes are staring directly at you. He was sad, and his sadness was palpable throughout the entire living room — his bitten lips, his painting, his hands covered in dried-up blue paint; everything was dripping in sadness. This was a constant with Hyunjin, but lately it had become even worse. He has an overwhelming desire to love and be loved, but his every attempt at fulfilling this desire is futile for reasons you cannot wrap your head around.

“I like the new painting,” you smile, focusing on the saddened blue face. Hyunjin scoffs beside you.

“It’s fucking terrible,” His hand shoves the canvas face down on the floor. You bite your lip. “Can’t even paint shit I like anymore. Every time I try, it always turns out muddy and sad.”

“What happened?”

He lets out a bitter chuckle. “Well I’m pathetic, so it’s still the same old reason. I had a date with this girl on Saturday, but she canceled at the last minute. Texted me something about me being too clingy after she agreed to go out with me, about how she knows she would feel suffocated if we dated.”

You furrow your brows together, anger bubbling up inside your chest. “What the fuck?”

“Oh, but don’t worry!” Hyunjin gave you a forced smile. “She made sure to remind me that it was her, not me, and that lots of women out there like guys like me. Whatever the fuck that means.”

Hyunjin shakes his head, turning his attention toward his hands before scratching some of the dried paint off. You sigh.

“Hyunjin, she isn’t wrong about that. You know that, right? You’re not the one at fault.”

He scoffs. “Sure seems like it when every date I’ve gone to since starting university has ended up with me being rejected for the same fucking reasons. It’s always me. Too clingy, too sentimental, too emotional,” his voice is almost a whisper as he speaks. He turns to face you again. “Remember how I would stop sleeping with you whenever I liked someone? Wanna know why I stopped doing that? ‘Cause I know it’s not gonna go anywhere anyway, so what’s the point? It never goes anywhere, and then I’m left alone again. Maybe I should just accept it, y’know? Some people are just meant to be alone, and clearly I’m one of them.”

Your anger has now morphed into sadness. You hate the way Hyunjin talks about himself, hate it even more how it seems nobody can appreciate the amazing person he is. Being caring and sentimental is not a flaw, and you pray that he never allows other people’s opinions to sway him into thinking that way. You pray he finds someone who can appreciate these qualities in him the same way you do.

“You’re not alone, Hyune,” you assure him, taking one of his hands in yours. “You’re surrounded by friends who love you so much, and while I know that’s not the type of love you yearn for, it’s still love.”

Hyunjin smiles softly at you before pulling you closer and pressing his lips to yours. It’s sudden but not entirely unexpected; the way you and Hyunjin dealt with shitty things in life and unpleasant feelings together had always been through sex, and you knew it always made him feel at least a little better afterward. And so you let him, returning the kiss even as part of you felt wrong doing it when your entire being was consumed with thoughts of only Minho.

As soon as he kisses you, he swiftly pushes you down onto the hardwood floor and hovers over you. Hyunjin’s fingers undo the buttons of your cardigan before slipping under your shirt, caressing your skin as his lips trail kisses down your neck. Soon enough, his body is pressed up against your spread thighs, and you know where this is going — but as much as you want to make your best friend feel better, you cannot bring yourself to do it.

“Hyune,” you softly call out, and he hums against your throat. “We can’t do this.”

He chuckles, squeezing your waist. “Mingyu always comes home late when he goes out with his girlfriend. Don’t worry.”

“It’s not that, Hyunjin. I just—”

“Do you not wanna fuck on the floor?” He asks, coming up to look at you. He cocks his head to the side. “We can just do it on the couch then, I really don’t wanna have sex with all those pictures of Mingyu and his friends staring at us in our room.”

“Hyunjin, no—”

“It’s not like we never did it on a couch before, stop being dramatic—”

“I’m in love with Minho.”

It comes out before you can fully comprehend what you’re saying, the word love slipping past your lips effortlessly. Hyunjin stills on top of you, his body rigid and tense. 

“Oh,” is all he offers you. You nod slowly, fingers picking at a drop of paint that stained the collar of his shirt.

You whisper, “I really am just as surprised as you are, believe me.”

Hyunjin shrugs. “I’m not surprised. I just— now you’re leaving me, too.”

You shake your head. It’s ludicrous to you that Hyunjin could imagine that you would ever even entertain the thought of leaving him. Running a hand through his messy hair, you pull him in and press a kiss to his nose. Hyunjin hides his face in the crook of your neck with a groan.

“Sorry, that was pathetic. I shouldn’t have said that,” he apologizes. “You know I don’t mean it like that. I just love you so much. I thought we would…”

You furrow your brows as he trails off his words. You thread your fingers through his long hair. “We would…?”

“End up together somehow,” he speaks slowly, his voice muffled, and your heart drops.

Hyunjin harboring these feelings about you was something you would never have imagined. You were certain he was content being your friend and having sex with you only until he found the right person. He went on several dates, after all. Your heart feels like it’s been shattered into a million tiny pieces upon learning about his hidden desire for the future he used to so often joke about: you two ending up together simply because you were each other’s only choices.

“Hyunjin,” you start carefully, “I love you, too. So much. You’re my best friend, and that’s never going to change. We don’t have to be together romantically for us to be in love, y’know? I realized that just recently.”

You feel him nod his head, his hand finding yours and intertwining your fingers.

“I’m just sad I won’t have you anymore. I’m gonna miss us so much,” he places a small kiss on your collarbone. “Whenever I felt like I was in a dark pit with no way out, every single time you were there to bring me out of it and make me feel okay again. I love you so much for that.”

And you can only softly smile at his words before your heart shatters all over again as you hear him quietly begin to sob in your skin.

“Hyunjin,” you call out, although you know he won’t reply. “You’re the most beautiful soul I’ve ever met. My love for you goes beyond us having sex — that wasn’t even important to me in our relationship. It was just something good on top of something already amazing.” With a slow nod, he lifts his head and gazes at you with red, teary eyes, causing your heart to ache even more. “I’ll never leave you. Ever. I’ll still answer your four hundred three a.m. texts, still let you hide away in my house, still happily listen to you complain about your days, and still hold you when you cry.”

Hyunjin pouts like a child, and your heart swells with fondness.

“Really?” He asks, and you chuckle with a nod.

“Really,” you assure him. “Me being with someone will never change our friendship, or my love for you. I mean, we won’t have sex anymore, of course, but I’ll still talk shit about your roommate with you so I’m sure you’ll forgive me.”

Hyunjin’s tearful expression vanishes, replaced by a small teasing grin. “I am gonna have to jerk off significantly more, so I don’t know about forgiveness,” he jokes.

You push him off you with a chuckle, sitting up as he tries to regain his balance.

“When did this whole thing with Minho even happen?” Hyunjin asks, setting his painting back against the wall. You shrug, buttoning up your cardigan. He hums. “So, are you already together?”

“Not yet,” you say, “but I’m gonna answer him after our class this week. If he fucking lets me, that is. He says he wants to be patient, but I don’t want to be patient. The only thing I wanna be is with him.”

Hyunjin’s whole body contorts as he groans. “Ew, what the fuck? When did you become such a sap?”

As you shove him back once more, you both burst into laughter while Hyunjin stumbles back and spills a mug filled with dirty paint water all over his floor.

The rest of the day goes by with you and Hyunjin painting together, a much broader array of colors and a much happier end result on the canvas: beautiful flowers painted by him standing alongside clumsily drawn hearts, stars, and other doodles painted by you. After signing your name above his elegant signature, you inform him the painting is leaving with you — it’s hanging up on your wall as soon as you arrive home.

Hyunjin is your best friend; it’s been this way for the last two years, and it’s indisputable to you that this fact will remain no matter what happens. As you watch him hunched over your painting, insisting that his flowers could be more detailed — even after you assured him a thousand times that they were perfect — you curse yourself for not realizing how beautiful this love between you two is. You hope he cherishes this love as well, in spite of his desire for the two of you to be together in the future. You know deep down this idea stemmed from his fear of solitude.

You’re not worried about him at all, though. He’s a precious soul, and anyone who fails to recognize that doesn’t deserve him. He’s simply getting rid of the wrong people in order to find the right person, someone who sees him as you do.

The love you feel for Hyunjin is unchanging, and if you had any say in it, it would be everlasting.

Your next Japanese class with Minho comes too soon, and you find yourself unprepared. Every trace of resolve you had after returning from your trip dissipated bit by bit every time you saw or talked to him. As soon as you saw his figure step into the coffee shop on Monday to pick up his usual order, you realized that every single scenario your mind had conjured up fell flat. Minho was beautiful, amazing, breathtaking — he deserved something grand and earth-shattering, not a simple answer from a girl who wasn’t even half as good as he was.

It certainly did not help that he, always true to his words, respected your time. Not once during his coffee trips or your never-ending talks through the phone did he mention the topic. And it was slowly but surely driving you insane.

You bite your lips so much on your way to university you’re sure your lipstick is gone by the time you enter the building, and you’re surprised your poor bag isn’t riddled with holes in the cloth from your insistent picking. You shouldn’t feel this nervous — Minho is the one waiting for an answer, after all. For all he knows, you could be simply building up the courage to let him down gently. But you are nervous. You’re terrified he will listen to your clumsy words and decide he deserves someone better. Or, worse yet, will only realize how undeserving of his love you are once you’re in a relationship.

And you don’t think you can face another heartbreak where you’re left to mend your gashes all alone.

You enter the building with shaky hands, fiddling with the strap of your bag and walking toward your classroom on autopilot as your mind is too busy running over all the ways in which this could go wrong.

All faded, however, once you saw Minho waiting for you in front of your classroom. His glasses slid down the bridge of his nose as he looked down at his phone, his body wrapped in a cozy-looking black sweater and sweatpants, a keychain of a cat plushie hanging from his backpack matching his phone case. You stop a few feet away from him. He deserves the world, and that terrifies you. Still, his presence alone melts away every ugly word of doubt and every piece of worry inside your body until the only thing you can feel is the swirling of that familiar pinwheel spinning inside your chest.

You greet him with a long hug, hoping he can’t feel your heart beating through your own sweater.

After class, he walks you to work, enthusiastically telling you about the progress he, Chan and Seungmin have made on their game. You nod and hum along to his words, but you can’t, for the life of you, focus on a word he’s saying. All you want to do is tell him you like him — god, you like him so much — but every time you’re close to doing it, the ugly words return and scream that he deserves more than an underwhelming confession on a gloomy, empty street.

You stop walking as you two reach the bench located just far away enough from the hustle and bustle of students on campus, the one where no one bothered you when you sat here by yourself for three years, the one that had oddly become your favorite bench among all the other identical ones scattered throughout your university.

Because it was here that you and Minho had your first real conversation, it was here where you two laughed and gasped at all the little coincidences between your lives, and it was here where you began to build a friendship with this wonderful guy who would unknowingly change you for the better.

It was the perfect place, and you berated yourself for not realizing that sooner.

Minho’s voice calling out your name pulls you away from your thoughts, his hand wrapping around yours and pulling you gently toward his body. You hum before colliding against his chest as he chuckles.

“You just stopped walking,” he says, a lilt of confusion in his voice. “I know you hate work, but I didn’t think it was this serious.”

And when you properly turn to look at him, Minho is smiling so beautifully under the somber sky of winter, as if he is the embodiment of sunshine — always glistening and radiating such a comforting warmth no matter how glum the world around him is. And, at the sight of him, you just can’t stop your words. Never mind how gloomy this campus seems or how lackluster your words are — Minho’s presence alone makes everything become golden.

“I like you because you’re you,” you mirror his words at you, “Because you laughed in my face for spilling coffee all over your notebook when I didn’t even know you, because you love coffee just as much as I hate it, and because you believe in silly myths about riding paddle boats together,” You blurt out, words completely unbidden by your brain. Minho’s eyes widened for a beat before slowly turning into crescent moons as a smile spread across his lips. You take a deep breath before continuing, the words flowing out of you so quickly you’re worried he won’t be able to understand you, “And you opened my eyes to the love I feel for my friends, which I was so fucking stupid and blinded to. But, most importantly, you taught me that love isn’t bad. It can never be bad because you’re love, Minho. You’re full of love, and there’s not an ounce of anything bad in you. And you make me feel deserving of this love, even though I still don’t understand how I can be deserving of something so beautiful.”

Minho’s arms are pulling you into an embrace before you can process everything you said, and by the time you seem to come to your senses, you realize tears have welled up in your eyes. He holds you close to him silently for a while, his left hand delicately massaging your scalp as you clutch onto the fabric of his sweater as if he might be taken away from you if you let go.

“I like you, too,” he whispers against your hair, and you feel your lips contort into a pout.

“You already told me that,” you grumble. “I just word-vomited my feelings to you and this is all you have to say?”

He chuckles, pressing a kiss to your head. “What else is there to say? I like you so much I don’t think I can put it into words. I might just say something stupid if I talk about it too much.”

You furrow your brows, pulling away from his embrace to face him. “Something stupid like what?”

“Like saying I love you.”

Your lips part, but no words come out. Yet again, Minho has rendered you speechless. He shakes his head dismissively, a smile still etched onto his lips.

“No need to say anything. I told you it was stupid,” his eyes drift over to the bench beside you two, and his smile grows. “Guess this has to become my favorite bench too.”

You let out a laugh, but it’s cut short by your tears spilling out again. Minho quickly turns to look at you again, his expression shifting into a mixture of happiness and worry for you as he wipes your tears away with his thumbs.

And as the sun begins to set, the street lights flicker on, casting a warm, yellow glow over everything around you. You cup Minho’s face and press a chaste kiss to his lips, then to his nose, before wrapping your arms around him and pulling him into an embrace once again.

“I don’t think I’m ready to love you yet. I’m sorry,” you apologize, both to him and yourself.

Minho simply hums, kissing your cheek. “I told you I’m patient, because love is patient. I would wait an eternity for the privilege of hearing you say you love me.”

You and Minho have officially been together for almost two months by the time winter break arrives. You’ve done everything couples do, except for two things: say I love you and go all the way. You’ve done every other possible thing — well, Minho has done every other possible thing to you, with you discovering that Minho particularly loves eating you out, often laying on your lap on your couch after work and rubbing his head against your thighs like a cat, humming and sighing until he has your attention before all but begging you to let him go down on you. Whenever you offer to do the same to him, in any way, he immediately turns the offer down, saying he’s satisfied just pleasuring you. It always leaves you with a million questions, as you notice him have to adjust himself in his pants or coincidently go to the bathroom, but you don’t question it.

The two of you also found ways to get around the whole L-word situation. I missed you becoming your go-to phrase for when you want to scream out that you love him, but are still unable to, while he usually just makes you swallow both your words and his own that are lingering inside your mouth with a kiss.

You had fallen into a routine quickly, with you visiting Minho most evenings after your shift to just lay on Chan’s stiff leather couch and watch him work. You two always hang out with his co-workers slash friends for a while before leaving for the night — Seungmin becoming like the pestering but loveable little brother you never had — and you head to your house in Minho’s car before you sneak him into your home so Mrs. Choi remains none the wiser.

Her ‘no boyfriends spending over two days at the house’ rule can’t possibly apply if she doesn’t even know Minho is there in the first place.

And so, he’s been basically living alongside you and your housemates. This outcome was almost inevitable since Minho hates his roommates while you love each other’s company.

You’re now packing your things with Hyunjin, who’s been sitting on your bed for the last half-hour rather than helping you as he’d promised. In the past month, he’s been able to come to terms with the fact that his ideal future with you was nothing but a coping mechanism after a month of sulking every time Minho was around. He deleted every shitty dating app on his phone and now focuses on finding love naturally, recently going out with a girl he met in one of his classes. The first time they met was the epitome of a meet-cute, with her accidentally bumping into him and spilling black paint all over his shirt. It brought back memories of when you first met Minho, and you had high hopes that this time things would work out differently for him. But, judging by the scowl on Hyunjin’s face and his nonstop complaining, you were wrong.

“But, be for real, why did it take her six dates to realize she doesn’t think we’ll work out?” He grumbles, spinning one of your necklaces around his finger like it’s a toy. “I paid for every meal, made sure she got at least two orgasms every time we went out, and she just suddenly decides we won’t work out? Fuck off.’’

You chuckle, closing your suitcase after triple-checking that you packed Minho’s Christmas present and walking over to where Hyunjin is sitting, snatching your necklace from his hand.

“Maybe she liked the free food and orgasms too much to let them go.”

Hyunjin scowls. “You’re saying that’s the only reason she went out with me?” He feigns offense, shaking his head. “I hope Minho’s parents hate your guts.”

“Hyunjin!” You exclaim, watching as he bursts out laughing. “Don’t even joke about that. You know how nervous I am.”

“There’s no way they won’t like you,” He assures you, “You’re fucking amazing, not to mention their son loves you. That’s more than enough reason to love you too.”

You clutch the necklace in your hand, humming before turning on your heels to check your drawers for anything you might have missed. Hyunjin using the word love makes you a bit anxious, an unwelcome reminder that you still haven’t been able to overcome this stupid emotional blockage preventing you from telling Minho you love him. The first and only time you’d ever said you loved Minho was that evening at Hyunjin’s dorm, and it hadn’t even been directed at him. Without saying a word, you both understand the love that exists between you — it’s unspoken, but deeply felt — and you’re aware of that, but the fear that one day he’ll grow tired of waiting is painfully tangible inside your mind.

When Minho invited you to spend Christmas with his family, you hesitated at first. Meeting your ex-boyfriends’ families had never been so significant. You were a teenager at the time, the implications were different and the stakes didn’t seem as high. This time, it feels as if getting Minho’s parents to like you is indispensable. How will he go on dating a woman his parents deem unfit for him? Especially with how highly he speaks of his mother, you’re sure her opinion of you will weigh on his mind.

You can only hope they love you half as much as you love their son.

The car ride to Minho’s parents’ house was around half an hour.

Half an hour you spent picking at a loose thread on your skirt and overthinking so much your head ached by the time he parked the car. You hated how nervous you were, but Minho’s parents liking you was a non-negotiable. 

After insisting on carrying your own suitcase — just in case his parents might think you’re an overbearing girlfriend if they see Minho carrying your bag for you — the two of you walk up the stairs and into his home. The first thing you notice is how cozy-looking everything is; from the family pictures neatly placed on coffee tables and on the walls, cat furniture and toys mixed in with their actual furniture, down to the fuzzy blankets thrown over the couches.

The second thing that catches your attention is the quietude permeating throughout the house, as well as the fact that the first family member to greet you two is an orange cat.

“Oh, did you miss me this much?” Minho asks in a sweet, singsong voice, similar to how you would speak to a baby. He crouches down to pet the cat, who is now entangling himself between his legs. He introduces you by your name, because Soonie is truly just another family member to him. You chuckle, kneeling next to him and carefully extending your hand toward the orange ball of fur.

“Hello, Soonie,” you speak quietly, afraid you’ll spook him. He eyes you carefully before sniffing your fingers and, ultimately, rubbing his head on your hand. You sigh in relief, petting his fur with a smile.

Minho’s cats liking you was also a non-negotiable.

You place your suitcases in Minho’s childhood bedroom, his parents letting him know they will arrive a little late after going Christmas shopping. Looking around his small room, you smile at all the small things that scream Lee Minho. The pictures of him and his friends back in high school are the first thing you notice, glued to the wall in front of his door lopsided. His thick-rimmed glasses and bowl cut make you smile as you analyze one of the pictures, where he and four other boys hug and smile widely in a karaoke room. Then, of course, his extensive plushie collection sat against a wall to your left — all stacked on top of each other like a mountain — which he proudly shows off to you.

“Y’know, I had to basically fight a little girl at the Sanrio store for this one,” he says, a bit too smugly, while holding a plush of Kuromi dressed in a ladybug costume. “I was sixteen, though, so I think that excuses my behavior. I would never do that nowadays.”

You narrow your eyes, humming skeptically. “Sure you wouldn’t.”

Minho just chuckles, meticulously placing the doll back in its place beside the cherry on top of a rather large Pusheen pudding plushie.

“Oh! You have to see my books.” He takes your hand in his, dragging you toward the wall facing his bed. A bookshelf expanding from the floor to the ceiling makes your mouth drop. You hadn’t noticed it before, with it being hidden away in the corner of the room. The bookshelf is decorated with fairy lights — which Minho promptly switches on — and filled with beautiful books, from intricately designed hard covers to intricate sprayed edges, every single book in his collection has something special about it.

He uses a small metal ladder to reach the top of the shelves before handing you a book so thick your wrist almost bends upon grabbing it. It’s a collection of seven Jane Austen novels, all in a gorgeous blue and golden hardcover. You eye the book like it’s a precious jewel, carefully running your fingers over the details engraved on the cover. Beside you, Minho lets out a breathy laugh, stepping down from the ladder and bumping your shoulder lightly.

“You can open it,” he tells you, but you’re still too mesmerized by the book to look at him. “It’s what books are for, whether they’re pretty or not. You have to open it and read it, otherwise they lose their purpose.”

You nod slowly, but remain unmoving. Minho’s hand suddenly rests on top of yours, and he opens the book for you. The page is entirely annotated, with highlighters and thoughts jotted down on pencil in messy handwriting. Looking up at him, you are met by his smile.

“See? The book is fine, the world didn’t end. I have these special editions because I enjoy collecting pretty things, but I always read them,” he explains, “I like when books reflect the emotions I felt while reading them. I annotate, scribble, highlight — I once threw a special edition Stephen King book across the living room and into a wall. There’s an indentation on it till this day.”

You gasp. “Minho, what the fuck?”

He shrugs dismissively. “I know, I know. All book sins in the eyes of many people. But, like I said, that just reflects the emotions I felt while reading that book. I look through any of these pages and I know exactly what I felt at that time of my life.”

You nod, your lips absentmindedly curling into a smile. Minho truly is something else. You skim the page opened before you, reading some of his annotations and laughing quietly to yourself as he wraps his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder.

As you close the book, he speaks again, “They’re a bit like people, aren’t they? Pretty and put-together on the outside, but once you really dig in, it’s all a mess and cluster of feelings and passion.”

 

You and Minho spend an hour lounging around the living room, with you meeting his other two cats during that time. Soonie and Doongie’s adoration toward Minho is clear, with both orange cats always rubbing against his leg or tangling themselves in his sneakers by the door as you two cuddle on the couch. Dori, however, remains laid on his cat tree, barely sparing the two of you a glance. Minho jokes that Dori hates him after he left his first mom, even showing you further proof in the form of a video where the gray cat bites his nose while he sleeps.

Upon hearing the key turn on the front door, your heart is quick to jump. Minho’s parents have arrived.

Sitting up on the couch, you gently push Minho away from you. He shoots you a questioning look.

“What? I don’t want them to think we were doing something indecent.”

“Indecent?” Minho repeats with a chuckle. “We were cuddling, not consummating a marriage on this couch.”

You grumble incoherent words under your breath, shrugging. “I know. I just want them to like me.”

“They were more than okay with seeing me cuddle my ex when I was a teen. We’re both adults, I’m pretty sure they won’t think you’re a filthy harlot.”

You gasp, hitting his chest and hissing through your teeth. “A harlot?”

Minho lets out a long, hearty laugh just as his parents walk through the door.

“Oh, there you are!” You hear his mother’s voice call out as soon as she steps inside the living room. You turn to face her and you’re greeted by the same smile you see on Minho’s face every day — they look so similar you have to hold back a gasp. “It’s so nice to finally meet you!”

You stand up from the couch and smooth down your long skirt, smiling while she walks toward you. You’re caught off guard when she pulls you into a hug as soon as she’s in front of you, her arms squeezing you as she sighs happily into your hair.

“Mom,” Minho calls out, “You’re scaring her.”

His mom pulls away with a chuckle, her left hand pinching her son’s cheek before resting on your shoulder again. “He’s the one who’s scared I’ll embarrass him,” she refutes. “And, god, you’re so pretty! Minho told me you were beautiful, but I just assumed it was the infatuation speaking.”

You feel your cheeks flush at her words, biting back a smile. Minho had talked to his mother about you — had said you were beautiful. You swear if you died tonight, you would die a happy woman.

As his mother steps away from you and into the kitchen, rambling on about how crowded the shopping mall had been, a man comes into your field of vision. He nods courtly before extending his hand, which you shake a bit awkwardly.

“I’m Minho’s dad,” he simply says. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Minho has been very happy on the phone since meeting you.”

And with that, he’s off into the kitchen, following his wife. You’re left a bit dazed. Minho truly was a perfect blend of his mother’s appearance and his father’s calm personality. 

Beside you, Minho pulls you into a side hug, his chilly hands caressing your arms. “See? It’s impossible not to love you.”

You freeze for a moment, before relaxing as you realize he’s talking about his parents loving you. You curse yourself inwardly for being so damn emotionally constipated, but let out a sigh of relief nonetheless.

You were worried for so many different reasons — that you wouldn’t measure up to Minho’s first girlfriend, that your personality would be scrutinized until your flaws finally emerged, and that this would be the catalyst for Minho to realize you’re not worth it. Not worth waiting until you can tell him you love him, not worth waiting until you feel like sex isn’t going to just ruin everything between you, not worth the hassle and the chore that is loving someone like you.

But as he walks into the kitchen with you, his arm wrapped firmly around your waist, like he’s proud to show you off to his parents, the level of reliability he radiates is enough to melt away all the annoying little worries you had inside your head.

Christmas eve comes two days later, and you’re rudely woken up in the morning by the sound of Minho’s voice cursing under his breath as he drops something on the floor by his bed. You groan, rubbing your eyes, and he turns to face you with an apologetic look on his face.

“Sorry,” he whispers, kneeling down next to the bed and pressing a chaste kiss to your forehead. “Good morning.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight, I think.” His fingers brush your hair away from your face. “I didn’t set an alarm ‘cause I didn’t wanna wake you up, but guess my inability to be quiet did that anyway.”

You chuckle lightly, scrunching up your nose. “Why are you up so early?”

“Gotta start cooking dinner soon,” he explains.

“Already?” You ask, perplexed. You knew he cooked Christmas dinner all by himself every year for his family, but you never conceived just how much work that would be for a single person.

Minho is unyielding despite your best efforts at persuading him to stay and cuddle you for a few more hours, and watching him cook is always oddly attractive to you, so you find yourself joining him in the kitchen, wrapped up in one of his many cat print sweaters.

At first, you simply sit up at one of the counters and watch him, mesmerized and all but drooling at the way he rolls up his sleeves, the prominent veins making his arms look so sexy while doing such a mundane thing like chopping fucking vegetables. Not to mention his hands, so beautiful and big as he rubs the seasoning on something you don’t even care to identify because you’re just too busy thinking about those hands all over your body. Only now do you notice how no real sex for almost two months has really taken a toll on you, what with the way you have to cross your legs just to try and relieve some tension because your mind won’t stop thinking about Minho’s veiny arms caging you against this counter and his big hands—

Minho calls out your name, and you snap out of your fantasies, humming as you reluctantly turn your attention toward his face with a dazed expression. He seems to find it funny, as he chuckles before repeating himself, “I asked if you would like to help. I can teach you some of the easy stuff. Must be boring just sitting there and watching.”

Oh, but it isn’t boring at all.

But you’d never tell him that, so you nod before hopping off the counter and awaiting further instructions. Turns out you’re worse at cooking than you had thought, so you’re relegated to chopping duty, which you hate for two reasons — firstly, chopping vegetables is boring, and secondly, you’re now deprived of your view of Minho as you stand with your back turned to him while he cooks.

It’s around five p.m. when Minho’s mom joins you two in the kitchen, and by that time you’ve done all you could, so you’re back to your spot on the counter. She smiles at you before ruffling Minho’s hair as he closes the oven.

“My baby is such a wonderful cook, isn’t he?” she praises, and he shrugs with a smirk.

“I am very boyfriend material, aren’t I?”

You chuckle as you watch his mom carefully fixing his hair which she had messed up, Minho scrunching up his face as she then fixes his wire-frame glasses on his nose.

“I’m so glad you’re wearing your glasses again,” she comments, cupping his cheeks and squeezing before letting go. “You look so handsome.”

“You should thank her,” Minho smiles, turning to look at you, and you shoot him a puzzling look. “Remember on your birthday, when you told me I looked good wearing glasses?” He asks, and you nod slowly. “That’s why I stopped wearing contacts.”

Your mouth opens, but you can’t find the words to answer him. You can feel your cheeks dusting pink as his mom coos at the two of you, saying something about young love that has you gnawing on your lips to hold back the silly smile you want to let out.

Minho’s mom leaves the kitchen shortly after, his father calling her from the living room. He takes this as his chance to approach where you’re sitting, hands resting on your thighs before he presses his lips against yours.

“I wanted to look handsome for you. It’s kinda pathetic, isn’t it?” He chuckles against your lips, and you simply shake your head, tangling your fingers in his black hair that has now grown past his eyes.

“It’s actually fucking adorable,” you assure him, pulling him into another kiss, one much deeper than the last.

He quickly uses his hands to spread your thighs apart, pressing his body into yours as you wrap your legs around his waist. The effect this man has on you is mindboggling; the mere slide of his tongue against your lips has you shivering. It certainly doesn’t help that you are now in the exact position from your imagination earlier today.

Minho always tasted like your own personal favorite flavor, always deliciously swirling on your tongue whenever you kissed him. He always renders your mind fuzzy and silly as bliss consumes the entirety of your being. You can only imagine how sex with him will feel like, and you don’t think you can wait any longer. Your worries be damned. You needed him more than you could handle.

But just as Minho pulls you closer to his body — your core dangerously close to his crotch, and sucking on your tongue in a way that has you mewling against his lips — his mother calls out your names, and you two quickly separate, startled as if you were burned. She informs you his grandmother has arrived and you two walk to the living room to greet her. You silently thank the universe for her not walking into the kitchen; the last thing you want is for Minho’s poor grandmother to catch you two making out on the counter like two teenagers.

She is a sweet lady, certainly not as old as you expected her to be, and she always has a smile etched onto her lips stained with red lipstick. You don’t even have to ask to know she is his mother’s mom, as the three of them share the exact same smile you grew to love so much.

You find yourself even more comfortable today, as you help both women set up the table for dinner — his grandma meticulously placing a beautiful lace cloth over the table while telling you about how this was one of her late husband’s first gifts to her when they first moved in together. 

It felt as if you were part of the family.

And as you turn on your heels to grab the fancy silverware from a cabinet, your eyes meet Minho’s gaze. With a smile on his face, he stands by the kitchen door, watching you, and your heart swells with joy.

This was everything you never thought love could be.

Christmas dinner was amazing — as you knew it would be. Minho’s cooking is always fantastic, and pure happiness is written all over his face whenever he was complimented. The way he offers to serve everyone, watching intently as each of you took the first bite before he finally allowed himself to eat as well, his lips upturned into a grin and his ears red as you all hummed and gasped at how tasty everything was. It’s his love language; from the way he carefully and methodically prepares the food, to the way he enjoys watching other people eat more than eating himself. He shows his love through his cooking, you realize, and you smile as you think back to numerous times you woke up in the morning with a beautiful table set with breakfast for you after he spent the night at your house.

You haven’t put it into words yet, but he has unquestionably been showing his love for you through his little actions.

And that’s what you want to do tonight as well.

After watching a cliche Christmas movie with his family, you two are now the only ones awake with you drying off the dishes Minho’s washing. He looks beautiful even now, with his hands clad in neon green dishwashing gloves.

“Minho,” you call out, poking his rib with the plate he just handed you. He squirms with a giggle, warning you to not tickle him. You simply hum, continuing as nonchalantly as you can. “Do you wanna have sex tonight?”

His hand stills, dropping a knife on the sink as his head turns abruptly to look at you, eyes bewildered. “What? What, and you ask me this now? While we’re doing the dishes?” He sputters, and you grin with a shrug.

“It’s not a big deal,” you say, placing the plate on top of the counter. “I just… really wanna do it. Really want you.”

Minho turns off the tap — at least five knives left ignored at the bottom of the sink — removes his gloves and lets out a heavy sigh.

“Okay, not what I expected to happen on Christmas night, but I’ll take it.”

You both stare at each other for a beat, before inexplicably bursting out laughing. Maybe it’s the sheer suddenness of your request, or the absurdity of the situation you were in when it happened, but you can’t help it.

As you both calm down, Minho pulls you into his arms and informs you that he will have to go out and buy condoms, since he truly wasn’t expecting anything to happen. You don’t fault him, the two months you’ve been together were filled with you all but running away from sex. You couldn’t help it, your brain always dragging you back to that night in Japan, and the way he avoided your gaze in the morning. Although you knew it was irrational, and that he was simply shy, your self-sabotaging skills were too great, and your mind insisted that if you had sex with Minho too soon he would think you were nothing but a slut. That’s what you were told most of your life, anyway, so you couldn’t be blamed for the way your brain was almost conditioned into assuming the same.

But Minho had proved time and time again that he was not like the awful guys before him, and that all your worrying was unwarranted and foolish. You were depriving yourself of something you wanted badly out of sheer insecurity and attachment to experiences so far in the past it was almost masochistic at this point.

You insist on joining him on his impromptu trip to the convenience store, only throwing one of his sweaters over the dress and tights you wore for Christmas dinner.

Minho holds your hand as you two walk down the empty street, Christmas lights from the houses and stores making everything seem almost like a movie. You spot the familiar logo from across the street, and Minho bumps his shoulder with you while you head toward the convenience store chain where you both once worked.

“This is actually the exact one I used to work at,” He tells you as you look through a fridge hidden away in the back of the store. “I loved working the graveyard shift. I rang up so many couples awkwardly buying condoms like they were buying hard drugs.”

You chuckle, settling for some pudding you two could share later. “Will that be us tonight?”

He shrugs. “We’re adults, it’s normal to buy these things. Unless you want me to act like I’m buying crack cocaine, then I’d be happy to indulge you.”

You stick your tongue out at him with a light shove, turning to look through the rather lacking options on the condom shelf.

“Grape flavor?” Minho makes a face as he eyes one of the boxes. “Who the fuck would want the artificial taste of grapes when fucking?”

You shrug. “Could be worse, imagine banana-flavored condoms. I think I’d throw up all over your dick.”

“That’s sexy,” He jokes, and you let out a loud chuckle, earning you a look from the only other person at the store this time of night on Christmas eve.

Among your other options are a green glow-in-the-dark condom — which would only make you think of Shrek while Minho fucks you — and a strawberry-flavored one. You decide to play it safe, grabbing a box of plain, thin condoms and placing them in the basket Minho’s carrying.

“Let’s just go for the safest option,” you tell him, “We’ll have plenty of time to play around later if you want, though I’ll go on birth control once we’re back home so we won’t even need them anyway.”

You watch as Minho’s eyes widen for a second, his eyebrows shooting up almost comically.

“Sure, yeah.”

“Don’t short-circuit now. I need you functioning to fuck me.”

“Keep saying shit like that and I’ll be broken before we even make it back to my house,” he states matter-of-factly, and you chuckle, shaking your head at his words. But Minho’s expression remains unchanged. “I mean it. It’s been over a year since I’ve had proper sex. I’m surprised I didn’t combust the second you said those words to me in the kitchen.”

With a chuckle, you pull him to your side and walk toward the cashier. It’s a poor teenage boy, no older than eighteen, clearly bored out of his mind and wishing to be anywhere but here. As he rings up your items, Minho points to his phone that’s resting on the counter.

“That’s Ahri from League of Legends, right?” He asks, and the boy looks up, his eyes sparking with interest. He nods. “I don’t play, but I’m a game programmer, so I know a little bit about it. What’s your rank?”

“Grandmaster,” the boy answers proudly, his face lighting up with a hint of joy, probably for the first time since his shift started.

“Oohh,” Minho gasps loudly, basically hyping up this random boy at the convenience store. You watch the interaction with a silly smile on your face. “And you’re still young, wouldn’t be surprised to see you at World’s someday.”

The boy shakes his head dismissively as Minho hands him his card, but smiles nonetheless. Once he hands you your things, he speaks again, “Are you from around here, hyung? Let me know when you have a game out, I’d love to try it. See if you’re any good.”

Minho raises his brows at the obvious teasing lilt in his voice, lips upturning into a grin. “How about this? I’ll give you the beta code and you can start your career of testing games for money.”

“You’ll pay me?” The cashier marvels at the words, and Minho simply nods. He jots down a code from his phone into a scrap piece of paper on the counter, the boy’s face now a complete shift from the expression he wore when you first walked in, all because of Minho and his ability to be kind and sweet no matter the person or circumstance.

As you head back to his house, only the two of walk along the shy streets as the clock hands turn past midnight. Among all the bad people in this world, you’re indescribably happy that a man as good as him is the one walking beside you down this street, firmly holding your hand.

You arrive home and quietly head straight into Minho’s room. You thank any higher power that might exist for the fact that his room is the only one on the first floor, as you would have to endure your desperate need and desire for him until you got home if it wasn’t. Any of Minho’s family members walking in or hearing you two have sex would make you want to flee the country and change your name.

He joins you after storing your puddings in the fridge, making you jump with his arms wrapped around your waist while you were blankly staring at the pictures on his wall. You sigh, the realization of what was going to happen only really dawning on you now that you stand in Minho’s bedroom, and your mind starts to wander and doubt everything all over again.

“I kind of ruined the mood by asking to have sex, didn’t I?” You ask as Minho places a chaste kiss on your cheek before resting his chin on your shoulder.

“There was really no mood in the first place,” he lets out a breathy chuckle. “We were washing the dishes.”

You roll your eyes, once again more annoyed at yourself than at him. You could only hope that your awful propensity of bringing up these irritating thoughts of yours at the worst possible moments didn’t drive Minho away from you. Could only hope you were worth it in the end.

“I know, it’s just…” You trail off with another heavy sigh. “This guy I dated hated that. Said I should just initiate it instead of asking like it was a business transaction.”

You feel Minho shake his head. “That’s stupid. Why would I think that?” He sounds incredulous, and hearing him say it makes you realize just how asinine that thought really was. “We had to buy condoms, anyway. It’s also good that you’re comfortable asking me that. It’s as it should be.”

And you can only smile, biting back a giggle because of course he thinks that. It’s as if Jane Austen came back from the dead simply to write Lee Minho.

His arms tighten around your waist, and you turn your head to look at him. “You should really stop thinking about… them,” He hesitates, “Your exes, I mean. Stop comparing, assuming everything will be the same and have the same sad ending. You need to let go of that in order to truly heal. I hate how every time I’m good to you, or do the bare fucking minimum, your mind spins it into something being your fault. I hate what they did to you so much.”

You feel your breath get caught in your throat, tears threatening to spill much like they do every time you are faced with this topic. But you hold them in. You don’t want to cry, not right now, not when everything is so perfect with Minho. So, instead, you take in his words. He’s undoubtedly right, and you must force yourself to face this uncomfortable truth.

Slowly, you promise yourself. You smile at him, a silent promise to him, and you know he understands you when he smiles back, his lips pressing a kiss to your lips.

He lets go of you and rummages through his drawers, and you look around once more. His plushie mountain, the pictures of his childhood and high school days. You scrunch up your nose.

“Will it be too weird to have sex in your childhood bedroom?”

From where you’re standing, his back turned to you, you can faintly make out the tip of his ears turning red as he runs a finger through his hair.

“Well, not really…” He trails off, “I had sex with my ex-girlfriend here all the time when we skipped school together.”

You let out a gasp. “Lee Minho skipped school?”

He chuckles, closing his drawers and immediately wrapping his arms around you. He’s a lot more touchy since you brought this whole topic up, you notice.

“My parents were always at work, though, so this is my first time doing it while they’re right upstairs,” He explains, bringing his finger up to your lips and lowering his voice to a harsh whisper. “So we’ll have to be quiet.”

You roll your eyes with a smile, nodding. You know all too well you’ll probably be too quiet. Once again your trauma playing a part in this, the words an old boyfriend harshly spilled about you being too loud and vocal have always been present in your head. Now that you think about it, all these moments and words are like post-it notes stuck to your mind, and you skim through like a student cramming for an exam every day in search of one that applies to your current situation. It was excruciating.

Hyunjin tried his best to change this about you, always assuring you he liked to hear you during sex when he noticed your pursed and bitten lips, and that you should be vocal about what you want and like. But you always settled for nods and quiet hums instead.

Minho presses a quick kiss on your forehead then. “I’m gonna shower ‘cause my hands still smell like onions and garlic after washing them a thousand times,” he tells you. “I’ll be right back.”

As you’re busying yourself looking through Minho’s extensive collection of books, a meow pulls your attention toward the door. It’s Dori, the gray cat you’ve decided is your favorite since it’s the only one you can easily recognize. He stares for a beat before approaching you, and you kneel carefully to stroke his soft fur. You soon find yourself sitting down by the bed with Dori on your lap, purring away as your mind travels to a future in which you and Minho adopt cats of your own, all while living together and making plans for the rest of your lives. It terrifies you slightly to allow yourself to have these thoughts because if things were to go wrong with Minho, this would only be another ‘what if’ that would haunt you.

Another post-it note to your already cluttered-up mind.

But his words from earlier come back to you just as you begin to panic. You have to let go of the past and stop assuming only the worst outcomes are attainable. And so you simply smile at the imagination, letting your mind run wild while Dori falls asleep on your lap, his gray fur all over your red dress.

You and Dori both jump as Minho all but slams the door when he returns, a towel in his hand drying his damp hair. He cringes at the sound, cursing under his breath. Dori leaves your lap, and you stand up with a pout. He definitely is your favorite cat among the three.

“Sorry,” Minho whispers, as if that will compensate for the loud noise. You take in his appearance; a green Christmas sweater and bright red sweatpants. You bite back a smile, because that’s so him.

“Your outfit is doing a great job of seducing me,” you jest, and he shrugs with a cocky grin.

“I know no woman can resist a Christmas sweater.”

He pulls you into him with a hand around your waist, his lips crashing into yours in a deep kiss. You notice he’s more frantic, less careful than he usually is, his fingers digging into the fabric of your dress as his hands slide up your back. He pulls away, breathless and flushed, and just looks at you for a moment. You can see the shift in his eyes, yearning swimming all over his brown orbs.

Clumsily, he shuts off the lights behind him then switches on the fairy lights adorning his bookshelf, his left hand still firmly clutching your body. Until it suddenly loosens, and you cock your head to the side.

“Okay, you gotta leave,” he says, and you follow his gaze, landing on Dori, who stares up at him almost defiantly. Minho lets out a sigh, opening his door before walking toward the cat and motioning toward the exit as if he will understand him. “Come on, I’ll give you treats later, hm? But you need to leave now, Dori.”

You fail to hold back a chuckle. “Why does the poor baby have to leave? He looks so comfortable snuggled up on the floor.”

“I can’t have sex while Dori watches,” he deadpans as if it were an obvious answer. “It’ll be weird.”

“Minho, it’s a cat. He doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“It’s still weird! And I…” He trails off, running a hand through his hair. He’s still facing the door when he blurts out, “I told you, I’m already really fucking nervous ‘cause it’s been a while since I’ve had sex. I might not be the best.”

You shake your head with a smile, crossing your arms over your chest. “Minho, that’s not possible.”

“Yes, it is!” He finally turns to face you. “Remember back in Japan? I came too fast, it was embarrassing. That’s why I never let you touch me.”

You jokingly pout at him. “Thought you just liked eating me out.”

“I fucking love eating you out, but I’m not exactly refusing that you do the same because I want to,” he explains, “I’m just scared I’ll be bad at it.”

You furrow your brows. “Bad at… getting a blowjob?”

Minho’s ears are dusted a light pink, and he throws his hands up. “Well, yes! Back in Japan I didn’t even know what to do with my hands. I don’t know what you like, and I haven’t been with anyone else to know what most people like so…” He lets out an exasperated sigh. “Fuck, I was so nervous that night, you have no idea.”

“You were nervous?” You let out a huff, recalling Minho’s clear shift in demeanor that night. “Looking into my eyes the entire time and pinning me down to the bed, that’s you being nervous?”

His entire face now flushes red, and he returns his gaze toward the door, where Dori paddles out of the room graciously. He promptly shuts the door, locking it this time.

“I was nervous,” He tells you, taking a step toward you. “I kept looking at you ‘cause I couldn’t believe that was actually happening. Felt like you were gonna disappear if I looked away,” His hands cup your face gently, and your lips unknowingly curl into a smile. “And when you looked at me in the morning, all I could think about was how awful I was the night before.”

You have to fight the strong urge to laugh because god, that’s why he was acting shy and avoiding your gaze. You berate yourself for even thinking otherwise, for ever assuming Minho could be like your ex-boyfriends. His words ring even more true than before.

You let out a groan, realizing you two have been putting off having sex for such mindless reasons. When he shoots you a questioning gaze, you simply say, “Minho, we’re both fucking idiots, d’you know that?”

And before he can say anything else or even entertain the idea of overthinking any more, you pull him into a kiss. With a surprised hum, Minho gently pushes you back, and your knees meet the softness of the mattress causing you to fall back into his bed. He climbs on top of you, pulling away from the kiss.

“You still gotta tell me what you like,” he repeats, his lips all but pouting at you. You smile up at him.

“No,” you say simply, pushing his hair back with your fingers as it fell into his eyes. “It’s better if we figure that out together, isn’t it?”

Minho chuckles, promptly pressing his lips to yours, your hand tugging at his hair gently as his tongue glides across your lips, causing a soft whine to slip from your throat before you can stop it.

“I like that,” he says between kisses, “When you make these pretty noises.”

You feel your cheeks heat up at his words and take that as your chance to take the first small step in healing, adding a post-it to your mind, reminding you not to suppress any noise that Minho coaxes out of you tonight.

The atmosphere in his room feels perfect — like heaven, as he would say. The soft yellow glow emanating from his bookshelf made everything seem dreamy; his honey skin looked stunning, and his eyes gleamed like the stars in the sky every time they met yours.

It was undoubtedly so much more intimate and passionate than any other time you had sex before, and you were both still fully clothed.

It was just like what Minho had told you many months ago.

His hands travel through your body until they rest on your back, finding the buttons of your dress, slowly opening each one as his lips trail down your neck, softly sucking on the skin. As he gingerly slides your dress down your torso, you realize that this will be the first time you two see each other naked. Yet, you don’t feel nervous. You want nothing more than to be close to him, with no barriers between you, to finally be tangled with him like the roots on the ground.

Minho unclasps your bra, his gaze unmoving from your chest as he slips the garment off of your skin and drops it on the floor. It’s almost as if you can feel his gaze burning you, your chest tightening and your breath hitching in your throat. He licks his lips, leaning down to wrap them around your nipple, his hand promptly finding your other breast and softly massaging it. You let out a choked gasp, tugging at his hair.

You feel his lips stretch into a smile before he softly bites the bud.

“So you like this,” He mumbles, pressing a wet kiss to your nipple. “Duly noted.”

You giggle at his words, your hands tangling in his hair once more. His kisses travel up again, from your chest to your neck, until he’s back to kissing your lips. Both of his hands now massage your breasts, alternating between rolling your nipples between his rough fingers and pinching them lightly, causing a rush to spread across your entire body. You feel your arousal trickle down your slit as you grow more desperate.

“Minho,” you call out between kisses, and he hums against your lips. “Do something,” you all but beg him, yearning for some release as you feel the small, unrelenting pulse between your thighs grow stronger with each stroke of his finger across your chest. Your hands now grasp at his sweater, tugging it over his head, the fabric also discarded somewhere on the floor of his room.

Your hands travel over the expanse of his chest, fingertips taking in every inch of his soft skin. Breaking away from his lips, you push him back softly so you can revel in the sight of him; his delicate collar bones, his strong arms, and soft stomach. He’s beautiful, breathtakingly so, and you don’t know what you did to be deserving of him.

“Enjoying the view?” He jokes, and you breathe out a laugh, your gaze flying up toward his face — his lips swollen, and his cheeks flushed a pretty red.

“Minho, you’re so beautiful,” you whisper absentmindedly, and he smiles at you, softly pressing his lips to yours.

“You should see how you look,” he whispers.

His left hand soon slips underneath your dress skirt, fingertips grazing your skin over your tights. You feel goosebumps trickle along your thighs following his every touch, so eager to feel his hands on your skin you’re sure you’ll rip your tights in half yourself if Minho doesn’t get rid of them soon.

He seems to grow as impatient as you, lifting your hips with a strong grip to slide down your dress, tights, and panties off of you all in one go. In no time, you are now laid bare before him, and Minho is swift to trail kisses down your stomach, sloppy and messy, painting your skin with his saliva as his mouth waters at the mere prospect of tasting you.

With a heavy sigh, he stares at your glistening wetness before promptly wrapping his lips around your clit without a warning and sucking, ardently, vulgar sounds filling his small room much like they do every time he eats you out. Always messy, always eager, humming against your pussy and sighing as his eyes glaze over with pure want.

You squirm like lighting has shocked through your entire body. No matter how often you experience the satisfaction of Minho’s lips on you, it always leaves you trembling like it’s the first time. His right hand slides up the expanse of your stomach until it reaches your breast again, his thumb lazily circling your nipple. You purse your lips as his fingers tentatively trail across your folds, spreading your wetness up to your clit before lapping at it slowly, the small bud swollen and aching.

You’re quick to remember to open your mouth, letting out the heavy sigh that had stuck to your throat as his finger enters you, Minho still licking and sucking your sensitive clit, nipping harshly and making your sigh fade into a whine. Hand tangling in his hair and tugging, you elicit a low groan from his throat, which you feel reverberate through your slick folds.

Your thighs shake as he adds a second finger, and soon a third, thrusting them inside of you and stroking your walls more vigorously than he usually does, as if he somehow also feels your pleasure and needs to lead you to your high as quickly as possible.

Minho’s hand leaves your chest, and you bite back a pout, his fingers now gripping your hips before pushing them up so he can reach deeper. It isn’t long before his fingers drag across the spot inside of you that has your muscles tensing up, a strangled moan falling from your lips at the sensations coupled with the unrelenting feeling of his tongue on your clit. You come undone around his fingers and lips with a harsh tug of his black hair, rutting your hips against his face desperately, his fingers digging into the flesh of your hips as you do.

He laps up your juices as you slowly come down from your high, tongue flicking inside of you and sucking hard before he presses a long kiss to your cunt. Your entire body jerks in response to the overstimulation.

His kisses travel toward your inner thigh, your lower stomach and breasts until he reaches your neck, where his teeth nip at the soft skin, sucking harshly before his tongue soothingly licks at the spot. As Minho positions himself between your thighs again, you instinctively wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him closer. Your mind goes hazy for a beat as you feel the thick outline of his cock press against your bare core.

“Minho,” you call out again, your voice significantly more whiny this time around, shaky and breathless, “Wanna taste you.”

He groans against your skin, pressing small kisses up your neck until he ultimately stops against your open lips. He breathes out a heavy sigh.

“Really want that, too,” he rasps out, voice hoarse as his dark eyes travel across your face. “But I really wanna fuck you. Shit, I need to fuck you so badly you have no idea,” He groans. You feel his length jump at his words as he presses your foreheads together and locks his gaze with you. “That’ll be hard to do if your pretty lips go anywhere near my cock.”

You breathe out a chuckle, pressing a small kiss to his lips. “Then get to it,” you simply say.

Minho’s lips curl into a grin. “Will you remember to be quiet for me this time? My baby sounded so pretty coming around my fingers.”

Your cheeks flush, just how loud you were before only now dawning on you. Fuck. Your words get stuck to your throat, your mouth opening but making no sound, so you settle for a nod.

He chuckles. “Good,” he replies with a kiss to your agape lips.

Minho sits up, detangling himself from your body briefly. He reaches for the box on his bedside table, scrambling with the cardboard before clumsily tearing it open and retrieving a condom. It’s only then you notice how his hands are trembling, from nervousness or pure lust. Either way, you find yourself smiling at the sight.

You reach out to run a hand along his arm soothingly, watching with hungry eyes as he tugs at his drawstrings before freeing his cock from the confines of his sweatpants. Minho hisses as he rolls the rubber over his length, shaky hands stroking himself one, two, three times, all while you eye him, watching greedily as if you were his own personal captive audience.

He lowers himself once again, hand now sliding across the length of your thigh before gripping the flesh, nails digging into your skin as he eyes you with an almost pleading gaze.

“Can I—”

“Please do,” you answer, almost frantically, before he even has the time to assume you might say no. You inch your thighs apart even more so Minho can slot himself perfectly between them.

Your mouth waters as you catch sight of him gripping his cock once more, tapping it against your swollen clit and eliciting a whine from your lips as your hands scramble to find purchase in his strong arms. Minho’s eyes then find yours much like they did back in Japan, and you know you are done for. His dark gaze once again felt all-consuming — desire and adoration swimming along his brown eyes, looking at you as if he were in a daze. Your grip on his arms tightens as he lazily slides his cock up and down your soaked slit, coating himself in your arousal. Minho’s lips fall open as he continues his movements, the blunt head of his cock gliding along your folds almost painfully slow.

He leans in to close the small gap between your lips, before whispering something you can’t quite understand against them.

“I fucking love you,” he repeats himself more clearly, and finally pushes forward, his girth pushing into you as you gasp, feeling as if all the air has been stolen from you.

You aren’t sure if your reaction is due to his words, or the way his cock is working you open so good, or maybe it was a delicious blend of the two. All you know at the moment is Minho, Minho, Minho, your mind foggy as his name rings inside your head like a mantra.

“Don’t gotta say anything back,” he tells you in a breathy voice, “Just want you to know I love— Fuck,” he groans as he is now fully sheathed inside of you, and you clench at both the feeling and the words spilling from his lips. Of course he would choose now to tell you he loved you. “Love you so much, so much I’d do anything for you. Would wage a war with the world if you asked me to…” He babbles, words slipping past his lips like they were the easiest thing for him to say. Like he meant it so deeply, he didn’t have to put any thought into it. His words only die as he presses an open-mouthed kiss to your lips.

Minho pulls his hips back in one swift motion, hands lifting your thighs around his body as he thrusts into you, evoking a rather loud noise from the back of your throat which is smothered by his kiss.

“You take me so well,” he growls against your lips, “We fit perfectly.” He breaks the kiss to look down at where your two bodies are connected. It felt as if you were one, melting into each other little by little the more Minho thrust his cock inside of you. You simply nod, mind even more dizzy with the way he’s already pulling out again before slamming back into you, his pace quickening as he presses you into the mattress.

Your nails dig into his skin, crescent moon shapes blooming over the expanse of his honey skin. His eyes still bore into you, hips now thrusting at an unrelenting pace, his small room filled with a cacophony of wet sounds, whines tumbling from your parted lips and curses that almost silently fell from his.

“Gonna come soon,” Minho chokes out, his eyebrows furrowing, “I’m sorry, I—”

You silence him with a press of your lips, hands now tangling in his messy hair.

“You’re always so good to me,” you tell him, feeling his cock pulse inside of your walls. “Wanna be good to you too, make you feel good.”

And he simply leans down before kissing you reverently. The sound of his skin slapping against yours mixed with the creaking of his bed likely much too loud, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. At least not at the moment. Not with the way his hand snakes along your hips, rough fingers now rolling delicious circles around your clit while his other palm presses down onto your abdomen, and his cock continuously hits a spot inside of you that has you all but crumbling apart underneath him.

Your mouth falls open, breaking the kiss, his cock twitching inside of you as his body stills on top of you. With furrowed brows and agape lips, Minho comes mere seconds before you reach your high as well, toes curling against his back as you melt onto his cock.

You stay that way for a while — a few seconds, maybe minutes — simply looking at each other as your labored breaths intertwine.

You finally reach up, brushing his dampened hair away from his beautiful eyes that now look at you as if you were the sole reason why the stars sparkle. Minho’s fingers soon find yours, tangling together as he brings your hands to his lips and presses a chaste kiss to your knuckles.

You smile.

You love him.

It’s not a realization but rather a confirmation of something you’ve already known all too well and for far too long. You still can’t put it into words, but somehow, you are certain that he knows just as well.

Minho accidentally awoke you in the morning with his habit of slamming his door shut, apologizing as you grumbled at him and insisted you would only accept his apology if he let you give him a blowjob. He laughed, simply pulling you closer to him on the bed as he sat up and you finally gave the most beautiful man you had ever met the head he deserved.

Minho’s parents and grandmother had left to eat at a fancy restaurant, and after lying through his teeth and telling his very distraught mother that you were feeling too sick to leave the bed, you two stayed behind. They didn’t have to know the real reason you couldn’t leave the bed — Minho and his apparent insatiable hunger for you. It was as if something had been awoken inside him now that he had a taste of you, and he had to make up for all the lost time.

You two only leave his room late in the afternoon, the sun setting on the pale winter sky outside his bedroom window. His family would arrive soon, and you needed to get ready for their tradition of opening Christmas presents while watching bad holiday movies.

When Minho followed you when you headed toward the bathroom, you thought little of it. It was only when he began undressing alongside you that panic truly set in.

“We literally had sex, why do you sound so horrified?” Was all he offered you when you asked what he was doing before entering the steamy shower with you.

It was your first time showering with someone, and the fact that it made you so nervous felt almost pathetic. Minho was right; you had sex, and you saw each other naked and sweaty and vulnerable. This shouldn’t be any different.

Except it was.

You found yourself too awkward to wash yourself, doing a terrible job at pretending to scrub at your arms as you watched Minho shower like a normal person. He let out a chuckle after rinsing his hair, shaking his head.

“Are you seriously shy? Seriously?” He asked, turning your body around so your back faced him. “The girl who begged to suck my cock just this morning is too shy to shower in front of me?”

You opened your lips to refute him, but your words died in your mouth as you felt Minho’s hand spread shampoo all over your hair. His fingers gently massaged your scalp before placing his hand over your eyes to shield them from the foam as he rinsed your hair. He repeated the process with conditioner, then moved on to wash your body with his almost sickly sweet watermelon body wash. He did it all while humming, making you so relaxed and comfortable that all your silly insecurities dissipated in the air along with the steam from the hot water.

Suffice to say, showering without Minho would now be a sad affair.

You are now sitting on the floor before the television, his family exchanging gifts. Dori purred on your lap, and Soonie bit Minho’s socks, trying his best to remove the fabric from his feet. It’s finally time for you two to exchange gifts, and you’re a bit glad his family seemed to be so immersed in the movie because you know you would combust if you had to explain your gift to them.

“Here,” you hand him an orange box with a black bow. “It’s stupid. Now that I think about it, it’s probably such a fucking dumb gift. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and Eunha even made one for her sister. I almost stole hers ‘cause it turned out much better than mine—”

“My god,” Minho interrupts you with a hearty laugh, taking the box in his hands and inspecting it. “It’s been a while since you word vomited so much. What the hell did you get me that made you so nervous?”

He pulls on the bow, unraveling it before taking the black fabric in his hands and tying it around your head. He laughs once more, and you roll your eyes.

“Minho, just get to it before I snatch this box from you.”

With one last chuckle, he finally opens the box. He stills as he takes in the notebook, sitting on top of far too much wrapping tissue paper. The cat print cardstock paper was a pain to find, but it’s worth it now as you watch Minho’s lips curl into a smile as his fingers gingerly travel through the cover. It was crooked, a bit too small, and still reeked of bookbinding glue, but it reminds you of the day you met Minho, and that was all you thought about when you decided on this gift.

“You fucking bound me a notebook,” he says, still bewildered.

“Took me a while, but I did say I was gonna do it. I’m a woman of my word.”

Minho looks up at you, his smile reaching his eyes and turning them into the pretty crescent moons you love so much. “I love it,” he beams, hands now squeezing your cheeks as he pulls you into a small kiss. “This and that coffee stained notebook are going on my bookshelf back in my dorm, displayed in all their glory.”

Minho pulls away and reaches toward two small boxes on the coffee table. He clears his throat, handing you one box as he settles the other on his lap.

“I thought of you when I saw this on my Instagram feed,” he simply says, fingers toying with the misshaped bow on top of the box — one very similar to the one on your birthday gift many months ago. “Thought about what we talked about in Japan, y’know, about soulmates.”

You raise a brow at him, quickly undoing the bow on your box as curiosity washes over you. You pick up a bracelet made only of red thread, eyeing it curiously.

Minho retrieves the same bracelet from his own box, putting it on before asking, “Have you heard of the red string of fate?”

“That myth that a thread connects two people meant to be together?” You question.

He nods. “Exactly. I feel like that was us,” He explains, taking the red bracelet from your hands and slipping it around your wrist before gently tightening the thread. “Feel like all our little coincidences were little threads tying us together until we met.”

You feel the tears well up in your eyes, but you don’t bother trying to hide or stop them this time. Grabbing Minho’s hand that stilled around your wrist, you lace your fingers together, admiring your matching bracelets. It could only be fate. Every small detail that aligned and every road you two crossed to reach the place where you are now could only have come to be because fate wanted it to be that way.

Out of every city you could have lived in, every different university you could have chosen to attend, down to every other seat that could have been empty on the day you met Minho — everything fell into place like a puzzle piece, exactly as if a long, invisible string tied you to him and finally decided it was time to pull you together.

Minho’s gentle touch brushes against your cheek as he silently wipes your tears — no words are needed between you two at that moment as he smiles softly at you while you feel your eyes burn from the cry you had held back for so long. And, as if you’re his mirror, you feel yourself smile as his lips upturn into a grin when his gaze shifts to the open window.

“It’s snowing,” he beams. “It’s the first snow of the year, and our first snow together.”

 

You stand in front of Minho’s house, the light snow falling softly and covering your heads in white as he kisses you, only stopping to grumble against your lips.

“Your phone’s going crazy in my pocket,” He pouts, and you furrow your brows. You had already sent your family holiday messages, and your friends were all busy with their own Christmas celebrations, so you were clueless about who it could be.

“Can you check it for me?”

Minho nods, untangling himself from your embrace just enough to reach into his pocket and grab your phone to unlock it.

“There’s like fifty new messages from a group chat. Best Fucking Five?” He chuckles lightly at the name, his chilly breath tickling your cheek.

You, on the other hand, immediately frowned as you heard the name. It’s a long-forgotten group chat with your old friend group from high school. You had all stopped talking a little before graduation, with you especially distancing yourself from them upon realizing their toxic words and reactions to your relationships only served to make you feel worse about yourself. No one bothered to leave or delete the group since it quietly died and had stayed that way for over three years now.

Minho hands you the phone, and you click another notification that pops up as soon as you unlock the device.

The conversation began with your former friend sending a screenshot of one of your ex-boyfriend’s newest Instagram post. You skim through the caption and blanch at the words accompanied by a sonogram picture. His girlfriend is pregnant, and he’s over the moon about it.

And you, for some reason, find yourself laughing so much you have to clutch onto Minho’s shoulder as your stomach starts to hurt.

He shoots you an understandably puzzled look, but you can’t stop the giggles that spill from your lips, so you settle on showing him the screenshot. 

“I got the best Christmas gift tonight,” Minho reads from the screen. “I'm going to be a dad, and the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known is the mother,” he trails off with a questioning lilt, brows furrowing as that had only confused him more.

“It’s one of my exes,” you manage to tell him after catching your breath.

Minho hums, taking your hands and shoving them in his overcoat pocket along with your phone.

“And why did that make you lose your mind laughing?” He asks with a small smile.

“I guess it was the shock, really. It also made me realize just how little I care about him now. All of them, actually. Every time I was broken up with or had my heart broken in some way, it honestly felt like the end of the world,” you explain, “Like my heart would never recover and like I would hate them for the rest of my life. For years I had such a strong ax to grind with them, and that hatred and grudge only caused me harm. It made me hate love, and it made me blame myself.”

Minho nods, pressing his forehead to yours. Around you two, the snow got thicker, and only the distant sounds of children laughing from neighboring houses could be heard throughout the quiet street.

“But it’s different now?”

You smile up at him. “It’s different now, and I only just realized that. These people are no longer people I hate. They’re simply their words and their actions toward me, but they, as people, mean nothing to me.”

Minho smiles and wraps his arms around you in a tight embrace. This realization makes you feel lighter, like a small part of the weight of healing has been removed from the equation. It’s only you and yourself now; none of them has any power over your emotions anymore.

“Maybe we should send the baby a present,” you joke, and Minho buries his head in the crook of your neck with a chuckle, and you jump as his cold nose brushes against your skin.

“Maybe we should.”

At that moment, in the arms of this amazing man who has helped you more than he will ever know, you realize that love truly isn’t bad. People can be bad, circumstances can be catastrophic, and wrong timing can destroy nearly everything. But love is, at the core of it all, good.

“Minho,” you call out, feeling him hum against your skin before lifting his head to look at you. “I love you,” you say simply.

His smile rivals every pretty thing around you. The first snow, the gleaming Christmas decorations, and even the moon herself pale in comparison to the smile that Minho gives you.

“I love you, too,” he replies, a tangible sense of bliss in his voice, as if he has yearned for a lifetime to finally be able to say those words to you.

You wrap your arms tighter around Minho, and your fingers brush against the red thread that adorns your wrist. It truly feels as if fate had led you to Minho, leaving little clues along the way to make sure you both knew when you finally met. His journey to you had been relatively easy, while yours had been heart-wrenching, but in the end, it had brought you heaven.

If soulmates really are a thing, there is not an ounce of doubt in your being that Minho is yours. More than anything, he taught you that love is present in everything around you. Love is being kind to others like Minho is kind to his family and strangers in convenience stores at midnight. Love is staying up with your best friend while she cries on the couch, not expecting anything in return. Love is the laughter of little kids on Christmas night echoing throughout a neighborhood. Love is also going out on your own, doing something simply because it will make you happy, and being kind to yourself. All this time, you held onto the belief that love is destructive and only leads to sadness, oblivious to the fact that it has surrounded you every step of the way.

Love is everywhere and in everything.

In the end, Minho had always been right.

Love is the most amazing thing in life.

♡ taglist: @notevenheretbh1, @malunar28replies, @jazziwritesthings, @finchyyy, @bloom-ings, @linocz, @minhochaos, @lastgreatamericandynasty1, @missminhoe, @jungkookies1002, @meanergreener

[wombywoo]

Hello!!

I wanted to ask if you would be willing to share how you go about finding the references for the injuries you depict in your work? Your pieces where the CoD boys are sporting injuries, fresh and old, are always so lifelike and to my untrained eye seem entirely medically correct.

I have been trying my hand at drawing the boys retired and resting as well, but I’m finding it difficult to decide what work injuries to add and how to find the respective references.

How do you decide what injuries to portray? And how do you go about finding the reference material?

Your huge fan, amustikas

Oooh ok ok! I'm gonna post my answer publically because I think others would find this interesting too!

To preface, I am definitely NOT a medical professional, and as such, a lot of the stuff I choose to depict in my art is not so much..ah, medically accurate as it is....aesthetically pleasing 🤭

I'll start with scars, as a lot of us enjoy slashing up Simon's face with them, lol. Generally, I'll do a cursory google image search for the type of scar I'm looking for (be warned, these can be graphic) with searches like 'burn scar' 'surgery scar' etc. But I find that for things like cuts and lacerations, real-life scars are a bit innocuous and lame 🤷‍♀️ Unfortunately not everyone's skin wants to retain that perfect slash look™��😔

So what I usually end up referencing are costume prosthetic scars ✨

As you can see, they're pretty gnarly:

And you definitely don't have to go this intense, but I find that the dramatic, carved-like appearance of these translate better to art than a realistically healed wound 🤙

The other thing to consider is the prevalence of injuries in the military. From what I've gathered, the most common will be back/shoulder/limb injuries, just a general fucking up of the whole musculoskeletal system in general due to constant overuse 🤕 Hearing loss, shrapnel/blast/burn injuries are also common, as well as all the negative psychological effects :') goooood times (not)

I think it's neat to look up real-life examples of these things, but it can get a bit intense if you're squeamish...

SafeSearch is OFF, the horrors are REal 😳

So yeah...I tend to tone things down, all things considered...😅

For this particular piece:

I researched broken humerus injuries and treatment 👍 Poor boy 🥺(Yes, I am aware that I consumed entire articles and did a shit ton of research about this just to go ahead and put a female's x-ray in this fucking picture sdfghjkl rip💀😭)

But here you can see the actual process for applying the brace for this particular injury:

Neat, eh?

When I draw Johnny with a knee brace, it's usually a real authentic one you can buy on amazon:

Product placement blast!!!💥✨ Bezos, where is my cut?? 🫰

As for ones like this:

I tend to just...scatter some wounds around and patch them up accordingly, lol. Bruising around the eyes is common with any head injury, and surgical stitching will offer a nice puckered skin effect mmm 👌 (I swear I'm normal abt this)

I'm sure the medical malpractice lawsuits are stacking up for me now, but again--it's usually more about the ✨visuals✨

My parting advice would be--go nuts! Feel free to maim and mutilate and mangle to your heart's content 🥰

Thank you for the question, Amustikas! I love your art as well 💗🫶