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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

In 2017, Equifax suffered the worst data-breach in world history, leaking the deep, nonconsensual dossiers it had compiled on 148m Americans and 15m Britons, (and 19k Canadians) into the world, to form an immortal, undeletable reservoir of kompromat and premade identity-theft kits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

Equifax knew the breach was coming. It wasn't just that their top execs liquidated their stock in Equifax before the announcement of the breach – it was also that they ignored years of increasingly urgent warnings from IT staff about the problems with their server security.

Things didn't improve after the breach. Indeed, the 2017 Equifax breach was the starting gun for a string of more breaches, because Equifax's servers didn't just have one fubared system – it was composed of pure, refined fubar. After one group of hackers breached the main Equifax system, other groups breached other Equifax systems, over and over, and over:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-password-username-admin-lawsuit-201118316.html

Doesn't this remind you of Boeing? It reminds me of Boeing. The spectacular 737 Max failures in 2018 weren't the end of the scandal. They weren't even the scandal's start – they were the tipping point, the moment in which a long history of lethally defective planes "breached" from the world of aviation wonks and into the wider public consciousness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737

Just like with Equifax, the 737 Max disasters tipped Boeing into a string of increasingly grim catastrophes. Each fresh disaster landed with the grim inevitability of your general contractor texting you that he's just opened up your ceiling and discovered that all your joists had rotted out – and that he won't be able to deal with that until he deals with the termites he found last week, and that they'll have to wait until he gets to the cracks in the foundation slab from the week before, and that those will have to wait until he gets to the asbestos he just discovered in the walls.

Drip, drip, drip, as you realize that the most expensive thing you own – which is also the thing you had hoped to shelter for the rest of your life – isn't even a teardown, it's just a pure liability. Even if you razed the structure, you couldn't start over, because the soil is full of PCBs. It's not a toxic asset, because it's not an asset. It's just toxic.

Equifax isn't just a company: it's infrastructure. It started out as an engine for racial, political and sexual discrimination, paying snoops to collect gossip from nosy neighbors, which was assembled into vast warehouses full of binders that told bank officers which loan applicants should be denied for being queer, or leftists, or, you know, Black:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

This witch-hunts-as-a-service morphed into an official part of the economy, the backbone of the credit industry, with a license to secretly destroy your life with haphazardly assembled "facts" about your life that you had the most minimal, grudging right to appeal (or even see). Turns out there are a lot of customers for this kind of service, and the capital markets showered Equifax with the cash needed to buy almost all of its rivals, in mergers that were waved through by a generation of Reaganomics-sedated antitrust regulators.

There's a direct line from that acquisition spree to the Equifax breach(es). First of all, companies like Equifax were early adopters of technology. They're a database company, so they were the crash-test dummies for ever generation of database. These bug-riddled, heavily patched systems were overlaid with subsequent layers of new tech, with new defects to be patched and then overlaid with the next generation.

These systems are intrinsically fragile, because things fall apart at the seams, and these systems are all seams. They are tech-debt personified. Now, every kind of enterprise will eventually reach this state if it keeps going long enough, but the early digitizers are the bow-wave of that coming infopocalypse, both because they got there first and because the bottom tiers of their systems are composed of layers of punchcards and COBOL, crumbling under the geological stresses of seventy years of subsequent technology.

The single best account of this phenomenon is the British Library's postmortem of their ransomware attack, which is also in the running for "best hard-eyed assessment of how fucked things are":

https://www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf

There's a reason libraries, cities, insurance companies, and other giant institutions keep getting breached: they started accumulating tech debt before anyone else, so they've got more asbestos in the walls, more sagging joists, more foundation cracks and more termites.

That was the starting point for Equifax – a company with a massive tech debt that it would struggle to pay down under the most ideal circumstances.

Then, Equifax deliberately made this situation infinitely worse through a series of mergers in which it bought dozens of other companies that all had their own version of this problem, and duct-taped their failing, fucked up IT systems to its own. The more seams an IT system has, the more brittle and insecure it is. Equifax deliberately added so many seams that you need to be able to visualized additional spatial dimensions to grasp them – they had fractal seams.

But wait, there's more! The reason to merge with your competitors is to create a monopoly position, and the value of a monopoly position is that it makes a company too big to fail, which makes it too big to jail, which makes it too big to care. Each Equifax acquisition took a piece off the game board, making it that much harder to replace Equifax if it fucked up. That, in turn, made it harder to punish Equifax if it fucked up. And that meant that Equifax didn't have to care if it fucked up.

Which is why the increasingly desperate pleas for more resources to shore up Equifax's crumbling IT and security infrastructure went unheeded. Top management could see that they were steaming directly into an iceberg, but they also knew that they had a guaranteed spot on the lifeboats, and that someone else would be responsible for fishing the dead passengers out of the sea. Why turn the wheel?

That's what happened to Boeing, too: the company acquired new layers of technical complexity by merging with rivals (principally McDonnell-Douglas), and then starved the departments that would have to deal with that complexity because it was being managed by execs whose driving passion was to run a company that was too big to care. Those execs then added more complexity by chasing lower costs by firing unionized, competent, senior staff and replacing them with untrained scabs in jurisdictions chosen for their lax labor and environmental enforcement regimes.

(The biggest difference was that Boeing once had a useful, high-quality product, whereas Equifax started off as an irredeemably terrible, if efficient, discrimination machine, and grew to become an equally terrible, but also ferociously incompetent, enterprise.)

This is the American story of the past four decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between "too rotten to stand" and "too big to care."

Remember last February, when we all discovered that there was a company called Change Healthcare, and that they were key to processing virtually every prescription filled in America? Remember how we discovered this? Change was hacked, went down, ransomed, and no one could fill a scrip in America for more than a week, until they paid the hackers $22m in Bitcoin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Change_Healthcare_ransomware_attack

How did we end up with Change Healthcare as the linchpin of the entire American prescription system? Well, first Unitedhealthcare became the largest health insurer in America by buying all its competitors in a series of mergers that comatose antitrust regulators failed to block. Then it combined all those other companies' IT systems into a cosmic-scale dog's breakfast that barely ran. Then it bought Change and used its monopoly power to ensure that every Rx ran through Change's servers, which were part of that asbestos-filled, termite-infested, crack-foundationed, sag-joisted teardown. Then, it got hacked.

United's execs are the kind of execs on a relentless quest to be too big to care, and so they don't care. Which is why their they had to subsequently announce that they had suffered a breach that turned the complete medical histories of one third of Americans into immortal Darknet kompromat that is – even now – being combined with breach data from Equifax and force-fed to the slaves in Cambodia and Laos's pig-butchering factories:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/data-stolen-healthcare-hack/index.html

Those slaves are beaten, tortured, and punitively raped in compounds to force them to drain the life's savings of everyone in Canada, Australia, Singapore, the UK and Europe. Remember that they are downstream of the forseeable, inevitable IT failures of companies that set out to be too big to care that this was going to happen.

Failures like Ticketmaster's, which flushed 500 million users' personal information into the identity-theft mills just last month. Ticketmaster, you'll recall, grew to its current scale through (you guessed it), a series of mergers en route to "too big to care" status, that resulted in its IT systems being combined with those of Ticketron, Live Nation, and dozens of others:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/ticketmaster-hack-data-breach.html

But enough about that. Let's go car-shopping!

Good luck with that. There's a company you've never heard. It's called CDK Global. They provide "dealer management software." They are a monopolist. They got that way after being bought by a private equity fund called Brookfield. You can't complete a car purchase without their systems, and their systems have been hacked. No one can buy a car:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/business/cdk-global-cyber-attack-update/index.html

Writing for his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tells the all-too-familiar story of how CDK Global filled the walls of the nation's auto-dealers with the IT equivalent of termites and asbestos, and lays the blame where it belongs: with a legal and economics establishment that wanted it this way:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-supreme-court-justice-is-why-you

The CDK story follows the Equifax/Boeing/Change Healthcare/Ticketmaster pattern, but with an important difference. As CDK was amassing its monopoly power, one of its execs, Dan McCray, told a competitor, Authenticom founder Steve Cottrell that if he didn't sell to CDK that he would "fucking destroy" Authenticom by illegally colluding with the number two dealer management company Reynolds.

Rather than selling out, Cottrell blew the whistle, using Cottrell's own words to convince a district court that CDK had violated antitrust law. The court agreed, and ordered CDK and Reynolds – who controlled 90% of the market – to continue to allow Authenticom to participate in the DMS market.

Dealers cheered this on: CDK/Reynolds had been steadily hiking prices, while ingesting dealer data and using it to gouge the dealers on additional services, while denying dealers access to their own data. The services that Authenticom provided for $35/month cost $735/month from CDK/Reynolds (they justified this price hike by saying they needed the additional funds to cover the costs of increased information security!).

CDK/Reynolds appealed the judgment to the 7th Circuit, where a panel of economists weighed in. As Stoller writes, this panel included monopoly's most notorious (and well-compensated) cheerleader, Frank Easterbrook, and the "legendary" Democrat Diane Wood. They argued for CDK/Reynolds, demanding that the court release them from their obligations to share the market with Authenticom:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-7th-circuit/1879150.html

The 7th Circuit bought the argument, overturning the lower court and paving the way for the CDK/Reynolds monopoly, which is how we ended up with one company's objectively shitty IT systems interwoven into the sale of every car, which meant that when Russian hackers looked at that crosseyed, it split wide open, allowing them to halt auto sales nationwide. What happens next is a near-certainty: CDK will pay a multimillion dollar ransom, and the hackers will reward them by breaching the personal details of everyone who's ever bought a car, and the slaves in Cambodian pig-butchering compounds will get a fresh supply of kompromat.

But on the plus side, the need to pay these huge ransoms is key to ensuring liquidity in the cryptocurrency markets, because ransoms are now the only nondiscretionary liability that can only be settled in crypto:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

When the 7th Circuit set up every American car owner to be pig-butchered, they cited one of the most important cases in antitrust history: the 2004 unanimous Supreme Court decision in Verizon v Trinko:

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-682

Trinko was a case about whether antitrust law could force Verizon, a telcoms monopolist, to share its lines with competitors, something it had been ordered to do and then cheated on. The decision was written by Antonin Scalia, and without it, Big Tech would never have been able to form. Scalia and Trinko gave us the modern, too-big-to-care versions of Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other tech baronies.

In his Trinko opinion, Scalia said that "possessing monopoly power" and "charging monopoly prices" was "not unlawful" – rather, it was "an important element of the free-market system." Scalia – writing on behalf of a unanimous court! – said that fighting monopolists "may lessen the incentive for the monopolist…to invest in those economically beneficial facilities."

In other words, in order to prevent monopolists from being too big to care, we have to let them have monopolies. No wonder Trinko is the Zelig of shitty antitrust rulings, from the decision to dismiss the antitrust case against Facebook and Apple's defense in its own ongoing case:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/073_2021.06.28_mtd_order_memo.pdf

Trinko is the origin node of too big to care. It's the reason that our whole economy is now composed of "infrastructure" that is made of splitting seams, asbestos, termites and dry rot. It's the reason that the entire automotive sector became dependent on companies like Reynolds, whose billionaire owner intentionally and illegally destroyed evidence of his company's crimes, before going on to commit the largest tax fraud in American history:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaire-robert-brockman-accused-of-biggest-tax-fraud-in-u-s-history-dies-at-81-11660226505

Trinko begs companies to become too big to care. It ensures that they will exponentially increase their IT debt while becoming structurally important to whole swathes of the US economy. It guarantees that they will underinvest in IT security. It is the soil in which pig butchering grew.

It's why you can't buy a car.

Now, I am fond of quoting Stein's Law at moments like this: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As Stoller writes, after two decades of unchallenged rule, Trinko is looking awfully shaky. It was substantially narrowed in 2023 by the 10th Circuit, which had been briefed by Biden's antitrust division:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/22-1164/22-1164-2023-08-21.html

And the cases of 2024 have something going for them that Trinko lacked in 2004: evidence of what a fucking disaster Trinko is. The wrongness of Trinko is so increasingly undeniable that there's a chance it will be overturned.

But it won't go down easy. As Stoller writes, Trinko didn't emerge from a vacuum: the economic theories that underpinned it come from some of the heroes of orthodox economics, like Joseph Schumpeter, who is positively worshipped. Schumpeter was antitrust's OG hater, who wrote extensively that antitrust law didn't need to exist because any harmful monopoly would be overturned by an inevitable market process dictated by iron laws of economics.

Schumpeter wrote that monopolies could only be sustained by "alertness and energy" – that there would never be a monopoly so secure that its owner became too big to care. But he went further, insisting that the promise of attaining a monopoly was key to investment in great new things, because monopolists had the economic power that let them plan and execute great feats of innovation.

The idea that monopolies are benevolent dictators has pervaded our economic tale for decades. Even today, critics who deplore Facebook and Google do so on the basis that they do not wield their power wisely (say, to stamp out harassment or disinformation). When confronted with the possibility of breaking up these companies or replacing them with smaller platforms, those critics recoil, insisting that without Big Tech's scale, no one will ever have the power to accomplish their goals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

But they misunderstand the relationship between corporate power and corporate conduct. The reason corporations accumulate power is so that they can be insulated from the consequences of the harms they wreak upon the rest of us. They don't inflict those harms out of sadism: rather, they do so in order to externalize the costs of running a good system, reaping the profits of scale while we pay its costs.

The only reason to accumulate corporate power is to grow too big to care. Any corporation that amasses enough power that it need not care about us will not care about it. You can't fix Facebook by replacing Zuck with a good unelected social media czar with total power over billions of peoples' lives. We need to abolish Zuck, not fix Zuck.

Zuck is not exceptional: there were a million sociopaths whom investors would have funded to monopolistic dominance if he had balked. A monopoly like Facebook has a Zuck-shaped hole at the top of its org chart, and only someone Zuck-shaped will ever fit through that hole.

Our whole economy is now composed of companies with sociopath-shaped holes at the tops of their org chart. The reason these companies can only be run by sociopaths is the same reason that they have become infrastructure that is crumbling due to sociopathic neglect. The reckless disregard for the risk of combining companies is the source of the market power these companies accumulated, and the market power let them neglect their systems to the point of collapse.

This is the system that Schumpeter, and Easterbrook, and Wood, and Scalia – and the entire Supreme Court of 2004 – set out to make. The fact that you can't buy a car is a feature, not a bug. The pig-butcherers, wallowing in an ocean of breach data, are a feature, not a bug. The point of the system was what it did: create unimaginable wealth for a tiny cohort of the worst people on Earth without regard to the collapse this would provoke, or the plight of those of us trapped and suffocating in the rubble.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

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/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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cressidagrey · 5 days ago

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Holy Ground - Prologue

Summary:

Nobody knew that Azriel found his mate. Until she nearly died. This is the aftermath.

Warning:

Rhys Bashing (as usual), Inner Circle Bashing (kinda), Referenced/Implied Sexual Assault, Referenced/Implied Domestic Violence, Discussion of Religion(?)

If any of this triggers you or makes you uncomfortable, please take care of your own mental health and don't read it.

Azriel had always liked Starfall.

Even he could enjoy one night a year where they danced and were merry…where they pretended that everything was just fine.

Just that this year…he couldn’t quite manage it.

Feyre had invited Lucien.

A year after that catastrophic Winter Solstice.

And for the very first time, Elain…Elain seemed not just willing but genuinely happy to converse with her mate.

*Keep away from her,* Rhys had repeated his order that morning, making it very clear what he wanted his spymaster to do. And Azriel…well, he had acquiesced.

Of course, he did.

Nobody had even noticed when he had slipped away…Nobody had wanted to notice. Why should they? They were all content...they were all happy.

Mor's mating bond with Emerie had snapped just weeks before and that had...everybody was so very pleased for her.

*You are not going to ruin this for Mor,* Rhys had snapped into his mind. *She has been through enough.*

Azriel wasn't going to ruin it.

So he pretended that everything was normal. And then he disappeared silently, and launched himself off the balcony and went flying. He didn't need to think when he did that. Even the shadows kept silent.

The night sky was a velvety black, speckled with countless glittering stars.

Azriel loved to fly, loved the rush of the wind buffeting his body, the exhilarating feeling of power and freedom. He soared high into the sky, basking in the cool breeze on his face.

At least he had this .

As a child it was all he had wanted. And now...now it was...now it was seemingly the one thing that gave him something close to peace. The last few green sparkling streaks on the sky...Skyfall was nearly over, once again.

He basked in it for a little while. Until he felt the scratch of Rhys' mental claws against his walls.

*Azriel,* Rhys' voice was harsh, sharp, demanding. *Where are you?*

* Out. * Azriel answered simply. * Flying. *

*Come back,* Rhys ordered with a sigh. *Look, I get it. You are angry at me.*

Azriel didn't even bother answering to that, swooping lower and then pushing higher again, revelling in the cold night air.

*Elain and Lucien are figuring things out,* Rhys continued.

* Good for them, * Azriel replied, his tone still bland. * Is there anything else? *

Rhys let out an exasperated breath.

*Azriel...I am sorry,* his brother apologised. *Be angry at me all you like. This would have only ended in heartbreak for you anyway.*

*That should have been my decision to make,* Azriel's voice was cold, curt, brooking no argument.

Rhys sighed. *Not if the political ramifications could have upset an already strained peace,* Rhys snapped. *Be reasonable, Azriel.*

* Are you done? * he asked Rhys drily.

*Azriel... * Rhys' voice was exasperated. *Fine. Be angry with me, if it makes you feel better,* his brother snorted. *If you want to throw a tantrum like a child, be my guest.*

Azriel gritted his teeth. This was not a tantrum. *Great. Thanks.* he shot back at Rhys nonetheless.

*Elain is happy, Azriel,* Rhys said softly. *And you should be happy for her.*

* Fine, * he said, voice toneless. * I am happy for her. What else do you want from me, Rhys? *

*For you to stop sulking,* Rhys replied. *And to come back to the Party.*

*No,* Azriel said simply, making another loop in the sky, feeling the wind rushing past him.

*Azriel,* Rhys growled, his temper shortening. I mean it.

*I think I'll go to that pleasure hall near the harbour instead,* Azriel said, his voice cold. * After all, if I want to fuck somebody, I should go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, right? *

*Azriel!* his brother snapped, clearly irritated. *That is enough.*

* What? I am just following your orders, High Lord, * Azriel gave back icily.

*You sound like a petulant child.* Rhys snapped.

* Go back to your party, * Azriel said drily. * I'll be just fine. *

Rhys let out a huffing breath. *Fine. Go and pout some more.*

Azriel ignored his brother, closing the connection and feeling his walls snap back into place.He would pout some more. Thank you very much.

Azriel flew higher, ignoring the party, ignoring everything. He pushed his wings faster, harder, revelling in the wind, in the silence, in the stars above him.

The only sound he could hear was his heartbeat, pulsing in his ears, matching the beating of his wings as he flew. He flew and flew and flew, until his muscles ached, until his wings felt heavy.

It was nice. He liked it. He loved it, in fact.

There was a reason he loved flying so much. It was freedom, it was a rush, but most of all it was quiet.

He did go back to the House of Wind…even when he had no plans to go back to that party. He would go to his room and pout some more. Maybe write some more reports.

Do whatever the High Lord expected the Spymaster to do.

He landed one one of the many, many balconies, recognising the Priestesses’ herb garden with a start.

"Spymaster."

Azriel froze for a heartbeat, closing his eyes, cursing mentally. He had wanted to come back unnoticed, to slip in silently. But apparently he wasn’t the lucky.

One of the Priestesses was sitting on the balcony’s ledge. He wasn’t scared that she was going to jup, simply because the balconies were spelled to prevent exactly that.

Sitting there, wrapped in a thick knitted blanket, with dark brown hair reached her waist was Irena.

Clotho’s right hand. The one in charge of seemingly all the paperwork that involved the library. All the bureaucracy went over Irena’s desk, all the accounts and acquisitions…

She was the daughter of one merchant of the midlands, married off to another richer merchant as soon as she had been barely old enough.

Azriel had met her for the first time two centuries ago. There had been a string of disappearances of young girls in the surrounding areas and his shadows had very quickly found the culprit.

Azriel had killed her husband…before he could kill Irena. Her husband had had a taste for violence…his young, beautiful wife had been one of his long-suffering victims.

Azriel had brought her to the library. He hadn’t really thought that she would bloom here as she had…hadn’t thought that a girl raised with a silver spoon in her mouth would be content with in the library. But she was.

And Irena turned out to be one of those scarily efficient people that could do the job of three people. In two hundred years, she had actually managed to make the House of Wind cost Rhys nearly nothing in upkeep anymore. Thanks to the gardens of the priestesses that kept them in fruits and vegetables and herbs…some of them sold to the vendors in Velaris, some turned into creams and potions in the stillroom, that were also sold…the library was just one thing the priestesses did. Some preferred the stillroom or the gardens or even needle work, knitted sweaters that were handed out to the needy in Velaris.

She had done that. Had bloomed and flourished here.

"Irena," he finally brought out, his voice hoarse.

She turned to face him for the first time. She had just grown more beautiful over the years…with long dark hair and dark doe eyes sat in a delicate face.

But all of that didn’t matter anymore. The moment their eyes met...suddenly everything changed.

His priorities were rearranged. All he cared about anymore was her. Was the priestess wrapped in her wool blanket sitting on that balcony ledge…

Irena.

She was his mate .

" Oh ," she breathed, her brown doe eyes widening near comically large.

Azriel just stared at her, feeling as though even the world had stopped breathing.

His mate .

His mate was sitting in front of him.

Irena .

Irena was his mate.

"Azriel," she whispered, her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper.

They just stared at each other for a long, long time. He stepped closer to her, wanting to touch her, wanting to feel her soft skin beneath his fingers, her soft lips against his. He wanted to pull her close...he wanted...

But Azriel didn't reach out. he didn't want to scare her. Didn't want to corner her. So he simply leant next to the railing a little bit away from her, still staring at her. "I..." he stuttered, trying to come up with he perfect sentence to tell his mate.

"I...I didn't expect that," Irena whispered.

"Me neither," Azriel said quietly, still slightly breathless, the information slowly sinking in.

"But it's not... unwelcome ?" Irena offered next.

"Absolutely not," Azriel said immediately. "I mean..." he said. She looked so small, sitting there on the ledge, wrapped into her blanket. One delicate shoulder poked out of it, only covered by white, near translucent cotton. She must only be wearing her nightdress, he realised suddenly.

She looked…so young right at that moment.

"Are you okay?" he asked her quietly, still staring at her, a soft, tender feeling spreading through him.

His . She was his .

Irena closed her eyes with a heavy breath, before nodding hesitantly. "I just....this was..." she said slowly, not daring to look at him. "It was unexpected."

"For both of us," Azriel said quietly, trying to read her expression. Was it...was she happy? Was she upset ?

She nodded, and then bit her lip. "I..." she started and his eyes lingered at that small, plump lip of hers, wishing that he would be the one biting it.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly and he instantly snapped his eyes back up to her face. "Sorry?" he echoed, frowning, because...what was she apologizing for?

"I mean," she continued, her dark brows knitting together as she bit her lip. Oh dear god, Azriel had never wanted to be a lip so much in his life. "I... I don't think I'm what you were expecting ."

Azriel took a breath, ready to assure her that he was positively delighted at the prospect of her being his mate but the words didn't quite leave his lips because...

"Are you dissappointed?" he managed, his hands clenching around the railing. He was scared what her answer would be.

She finally looked at him. Looked into his eyes and Azriel felt the world slow down for a moment, felt his throat tighten as she searched his expression, searching for something.

Whatever she was searching for, she seemed to find it though because she let out a sigh of relief, her lips quirking into a small, self-depreciating smile. "No," she said honestly. Azriel's breath caught at the Genuity on her face. "No, I'm not. But I...I don't know what...if I can ever give you..." Irena said weakly.

He shook his head. "We have time," Azriel promised her fiercely. All the time. They could figure this out at their own pace.

"Time," Irena echoed softly, looking towards the vast, twinkling night sky, the stars reflected in her eyes.

She looked back at him for a moment, and he could see an almost helpless expression in her eyes.

"I...I don't want to disappoint you,” she said quietly.

"You couldn’t," Azriel whispered, still staring at her, at the beautiful face of his mate. "Believe me, you never could disappoint me."

She gave him the tiniest smile. She didn't believe him, he knew that. Regardless of how ridiculous it was. She deserved more than him. More than scarred and battered and broken warrior.

"I will never...I will never force you," he promised her softly. "I will never..."

She nodded, but Azriel still saw something like relief flash over her face.

It broke his heart. "You are a good male," she whispered.

"No. I am not," Azriel immediately disagreed, because he knew he wasn't. He couldn't even begin to name all the things he had done, all the horrors he had committed.

He had killed her husband. That was just one of the things on his long, long list. “You deserve better than me,” he said weakly.

"You are my mate," Irena murmured softly. "There is nothing better."

"I...have...killed people," he protested. Killed her husband too. though he did think that that male deserved it.

"You did," she agreed. "You are a warrior. A protector. You were the one that saved me" she said quietly.

Irena took a deep breath, and then, slowly, reached out, touching his scarred fingers, running small, delicate fingertips over the back of his hands, and Azriel froze, completely still, hardly able to breath as she slowly traced the scars on his skin.

Her touch was light, but searing, making his skin tingle.

He slowly turned his hand, catching her fingers between his, squeezing gently as he intertwined their hands.

"I will never force you. I will never lay a finger on you. Whatever we do in the future, is your decision," he swore.

She stared up at him, the stars reflected in her eyes, her cheeks a faint pink.

Beautiful . Azriel thought, mesmerized and completely enraptured.

"I believe you," she whispered and Azriel's breath caught.

From her...that had been hurt so much...to hear that...it was...

"I will protect you," Azriel promised fiercely and her breath hitched as he lifted her hand, carefully, gently pressing his lips to the tips of her fingers. "I will protect you with my life."

She smiled at him then, a real smile, and Azriel felt as though his heart might stop. He had thought her beautiful before, but now, with her face illuminated in all its delicate beauty by the starry night sky...she was breathtaking .

"I...I will need some time to adjust," Irena said softly. Azriel just nodded dumbly, still a little star struck by her smile. "I...I haven't..." Irena said and she turned her head, looking out into the night sky, her hand still in his.

She hesitated, clearly struggling for words, and Azriel felt his heart seize up in his chest. Had he overwhelmed her? Had he pressured her?

"I haven't been with anyone in a long time." she admitted quietly. Irena didn't look at him, but Azriel was still looking at her, taking in her soft, almost angelic features, the slight blush on her cheeks.

He swallowed."I understand," Azriel whispered, and he did. He understood her hesitation, her uncertainty. And he would be patient...he would wait for as long as she needed.

"But...if you wanted to...you know where to find me," she said softly.

Azriel felt as though he was dreaming. He had found his mate, his beautiful, incredible mate, and she had welcomed him, wanted him even, and

Breathe . He told himself as he tried to calm the hammering of his heart. Breathe .

And slowly, carefully, he nodded, his fingers still interlaced with hers. "I will come to you," he said, his voice husky. "Whenever you want me too."

She was...a gift. A gift he didn't deserve but would treasure always.

Slowly...and so, so very carefully, Azriel stepped closer to her, still holding her hand, before lowering himself slowly down to sit next to her on the ledge. And this close he could sense just how much smaller she was than him, could feel the heat radiating from her body, smell her scent.

Poppies and something sweet and warm like…apple blossoms maybe?

Azriel wanted...gods, he wanted to kiss her.

But he didn't. He just held her hand, trying to memorize every small detail of hers. The curve of her cheek, the soft blush on her skin, her nose, the full lips.... The tiny flecks of gold in her eyes that reflected the stars above them.

She was breathtakingly beautiful

For a moment Azriel forgot where there were, forgot the cold air around them. For a moment there were only the two of them on this ledge, beneath the stars and a soft night sky. And it was...he felt peaceful .

It wasn't a feeling he had a lot. But here, on the ledge, his hand in hers, he felt at peace. And when Irena slowly rested her head on his shoulder, Azriel could feel nothing but utter contentment.

His heart swelled with affection for her, and he carefully rested his cheek against her head, taking a deep breath.

This was real. She was his mate.

She was truly, truly his.

His .

And nobody knew. Nobody had a clue. He could keep her all to himself.

And selfishly...that felt really good.

Nobody was going to have an opinion about them. Nobody needed to know now.

He wanted to keep her a secret. Gods, he wanted to.

She let out a soft, content sigh, her head still resting on his shoulder, and Azriel smiled to himself.

Notes:

If you liked this fic, then kudos, comments or constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!

#acotar fanfiction #azriel x reader #azriel x oc #azriel fanfic #azriel fanfiction #Holy Ground

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katiascraft · 1 month ago

Text

"You should think about the consequence of your magnetic field being a little too strong" | LN4

Parings: Lando Norris x argentine!reader.

Summary: Your bestie Franco Colapinto is now an F1 driver for Williams Reacing Team. He flew you to the Austin Grand Prix in the USA. Little did you know you would blew one of the papaya boys' mind.

Now playing: "Gorgeous" by Taylor Swift.

Word count: +1,6k.

Warnings: use of Spanish. Pure fluff. Not a native English speaker so there could be errors. Not proofread.

Author's note: had this idea while going to uni and i found it so cute! I'm really needing Franco to stay forever in F1 🥹 I promise mate and pizza is the best! Don't forget to like or reblog! And follow me so we can be friemds :3 (and drink mate together!)

MASTERLIST

You were so excited to finally see your best friend shine in this world. You have always been with him through thick and thin. He trusted you blindly.

You arrived to the paddock with your mate and flask in hand. You couldn’t share your mate with Franco just in case. To protect his health before the race. So he had his as well. You were talking and laughing about memes and stuff you saw so he wouldn’t be so nervous and get lose.

You never felt so happy to be with him. You admired him so much. His strength in never give up to make his dreams come true knowing he had what is needed to shine in this sport. You’ve always loved formula one. Back home you loved spending the weekends at kartings or watching national races with your family. You love the adrenaline that gives you driving really fast. You met franco at the go karts when you were kids and since then you were inseparable. Both of your families were intimate.

“Para antes de que me dejes sola nos podemos sacar una foto? Mamá me pidió. Si no, se va a poner pesada” (you asked for a picture with him before he goes into the garage to do his driver thing - because your mom asked for one back from Argentina) you said to him giggling a little so you posed for a few pictures and even Alex got shot. You didn’t know he was behind trying to understand your conversation failing in each word. You all laughed and hugged your best friend tightly. You gave him a kiss on the cheek and hugged Alex too.

“Good luck guys! I know you’ll kill it! Love ya” you said happily waving at them while they got far from you. You poured more water into your mate and drunk it. You needed to wait for Lily so you stayed with Maria, Franco’s manager. You drank mate together talking for a while. Then Lily finally arrived back from the bathroom and you hugged her in response. You loved her. She was always so welcoming. It was so nice to finally meet in person. She is so fun to be around. And so polite. You already loved her.

“Are you hungry? Maybe we can go and have some pizza at the resto” she offered and you nodded.

You and Lily went into the resto and asked for the pizza you wanted. As a regular argentine - you walked everywhere with your mate and flask. You were to drink mate and have pizza. The best combination. Lily wasn’t so sure about it so she ordered a coke.

You chose a table there and sat down starting to talk about flights and people and gossip. There’s always gossip to talk about. English wasn’t hard on you because back home you were an English teacher. So you were fluid but of course you had a foreign accent.

While you and Lily were chatting. The waiter brought you the food and started eating. She was telling you everything about everybody you didn’t know. How the drivers were in real life and stuff. She said hi through the glass window in front of you so you looked where she did and there you saw your crush: Lando Norris. You smiled at him passing by. Didn’t say hi because you actually didn’t know him so you thought that maybe it was inappropriate.

Lando smiled back at Lily when she said hi. Immediately he saw this mistery girl he has never seen in his life here on the paddock. Oh god. He thought she was so beautiful. When she smiled back at him he felt his heart skip a beat. He never felt like this seeing someone for the first time. When he passed through the Williams building he looked at Oscar.

“Do you know who the girl with Lily was?” He asked curiously. Oscar denied with his head.

“I’ve actually have no idea mate. Maybe she is something of Franco. He is the new guy so maybe you know” he said while going up the stairs at the Mc Claren building. Lando nodded. But he thought about it from then. Your smile and your face were stuck in his head. He couldn’t ask Franco about it either because it could be misinterpreted.

(…)

After the race you were already a bit drunk from drinking beer. You were going crazy in excitement. Franco scored a point again! What an achievement. You really wanted him to get a seat for next year. He is ready. And he knows it. He is doing so well. And he is doing history for our country. When he came back to the garage you jumped at him, making him laugh. You were out of your mind. You congratulated him and kissed his face. He isn’t into hugs that much but he let you do it along with the rest of the team. Charles has won the race and oh boy! He was even more beautiful in person. You got a little shy about it. We could say you felt intimidated by the men driving.

You wanted to see the podium so you got out of the garage alone and tried to make your way to where the podium and celebration were to take place. You were texting like crazy to your friends and family, even Franco’s family. For that reason you weren’t looking where you were walking.

Lando was defeated. He was struggling finding a way of not being so harsh on himself. He got the chance and he didn’t know how it slipped through his fingers again. Oscar hugged him in support “everything’s okay mate. You did a great race. Next time it will be” he said trying to push his friend back up from the lose. He was texting his mum that couldn’t be there with him. He wasn’t looking where he was heading until he and somebody else crashed making both phones crash into the cement.

“Oh god im so so sorry” a feminine voice said that made him look up to see who she was. And in that moment he saw you. Worry all over your face. Cheeks red and you handing him his phone with the screen broken that you picked up from the floor rapidly. “I’m really sorry I didn’t see you. I can make it up. Tell me how much it costs to fix it and I’ll pay” she said and you just found it so cute. You were truly worried but he didn’t care about the phone. He could buy another one.

“Oh no no it’s fine really you don’t need to worry I didn’t see you either. What 's your name?” He said politely and sweetly, taking his phone back. You felt so ashamed. First time you come to an F1 race and you already broke lando’s phone. You felt so embarrassed.

“Really? My name is y/n. Nice to meet you by the way” you said turning red because his sight made you feel so flustered. He had the most beautiful eyes you have ever seen. And in person he was even more handsome that you could appreciate on Pinterest or tumblr. He licked his lips, nodding.

“Nice to meet you too y/n. I’m lando. Did I break your phone?”he asked sweetly. He couldn’t believe how beautiful you were and your voice. Oh he loved your voice and he didn’t even know why.

You denied “oh no it’s fine it’s just the screen. It’s nothing really” you said trying to make sure he didn’t worry about it. You could fix it back home.

La do saw the screen of your phone broken. He considered it was a huge damage “let me make it up to you. It 's on me okay? You’ll just need to give your number so we can talk about it” he said charmingly, probably not losing the opportunity of his life. Your heart started racing like crazy. You giggle shyly and nervous. He found you so gorgeous. He needed to know you. He even wanted to kiss you right there. He gave you his phone so you typed your number.

Y/n 🇦🇷. That was your name on his phone now. You gave it back to him. He smiled watching his screen.

“Oh, are you from Argentina? Is Franco your brother?” He asked to get crucial information. He would die if you were Franco’s girlfriend. He wouldn’t be able to take it. You were too beautiful.

You laughed a little “Nono he is my friend since we were kids but yeah I’m from Argentina. Franco invited me this weekend. My first ever F1 race” you told him. He smiled.

“Really? Is it your first? So sad you didn’t get to see me on the podium. I would've asked you to marry me up there. You’re gorgeous to be honest” he said and you almost died. Actually you thought your soul left your body for a moment.

“Oh wow thank you” you said flustered with a huge smile on your face looking at him nervously. “It is indeed really sad. I would’ve said yes to be honest. You’re gorgeous too, lando” yo said just like him playfully. “ I gotta see leclerc celebrate now but maybe next time we could get married alright? Nos vemos Lando. I’ll be waiting for your text. I’ll be cheering for you next weekend” you said quirky and gave him a kiss on his cheek to keep on walking to the podium.

He watched you leave his side completo stupid because you actually said you would marry him. He didn’t even know you but he already knew how amazing you were and how in love he already was.

The Latina charm he thought.

And of course he will text you. Right there he sent you a text.

“Hasta luego mujer bonita. Don’t forget to save my number like you already have my heart ;)”

It was cheesy. And he used the translator. But he would do anything to make you fall in love with him.

——————————————————————————————

You definitely need to try mate. It’s the best thing in the world I promise :3

Hope you liked it 💌 if you have any ideas my inbox is open so send your requests!

#lando norris fanfic #lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine #lando x reader #lando norris #lando norris fluff #lando norris x you #f1 x you #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #f1 fic #f1 drivers #f1 fanfic #f1 x female reader

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qqueenofhades · 5 months ago

Note

I think the Aaron Sorkin fic people are writing about the convention to be extremely silly. It's going to be Biden. And if Biden's health takes a downturn and he feels the need to step down its going tk be Harris. This fantasy where we skip over her to whip up two random white guys(or like maaaybe Witmer) and somehow cruise to victory instead of fragmenting the party months before the election is simply not going to happen.

Look, I'm just saying, I got an email from the Biden campaign this morning where they seemed pretty darn happy with the actual (i.e. not-bloviating media) results of the debate: $38 million raised in 4 days ($30 million from individual small-dollar donors), 10K new volunteers in a week, 3x surge in campaign volunteers for battleground states, essentially no change or even a modest boost in the polls. So I think at this point, we can cautiously conclude the following things:

The debate looked bad for Biden, perhaps, but doesn't seem to have hurt him nearly as much the incredibly bad-faith BIDEN NEEDS TO STEP DOWN NOW takes being pumped out by the NYT and its other compatriots would suggest. Especially when these same media outlets have been gleefully sabotaging Biden at every turn for years already and whose fake-sanctimonious hand-wringing "for the good of the nation" pieces honestly should get them dropped into Superhell for Bad Journalists;

Biden went to Raleigh NC right after the debate and gave a fiery rally speech that was very well received. Now, I don't know why we didn't have that Biden at the debate, but it was the same night and there clearly was not any "cOgnItiVe dEcLinE" happening there (also Biden has a stutter and has for literally his entire life, and had a cold on debate night, so it was just an unfortunate confluence of factors)

There are very few actually undecided voters in this election (once again: HOW???) and those who tuned into the debate were largely already convinced of which candidate they were voting for and this didn't do much to change their minds. Just like, you know, pretty much every other debate in the history of presidential elections.

Ordinary voters, and not mainstream media outlets with BIDEN IZ BAD goggles clamped over their eyes, were able to see Trump's insane Gish gallops, lies, and full-blown dementia; this isn't going to get any better for him when he's already lost 20%-25% of GOP voters in every state primary and still is going to be sentenced in his criminal trial;

The D.C. political elite screaming about how Biden should step down (FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION) and leave the Democrats to start from scratch with some Star Chamber-selected candidate with no money and no incumbency record and no organization apparatus and a divided party are either fucking weapons grade morons or working secretly for Trump, because that IS in fact the best way to lose the election;

Such speculation seems to fall chiefly on Gavin Newsom, who (to his credit) has shut down any and all suggestion that he should try to step in and take the place of an incumbent who has won every state primary with 90% or more, because he's remotely sane and understands that this year is too important to fuck around with;

I've somehow never seen any suggestion that Biden should step aside for the duly elected (brown, female) Vice President, because everyone seems to think some Young Miraculous White Guy is coming and/or should step in;

All this while SCOTUS is clearly so confident of Trump getting back in that it's willing to grant him Absolute God King status pre- and post-emptively;

Yes, Biden needs to up his game before the next debate (though that's on Fox News iirc, blargh), but I think it's far enough post-debate that we can say it was bad but did not sink him, and if anything, reinforced the fact to many ordinary, non-brainwormed voters that Biden is old (which has been the number one chief theme of news coverage for four years and is no surprise to anyone) but is a decent and principled man doing a good job, while Trump is an absolute gibbering insane orange shitmonger fascist. I don't think he did himself any favors in that regard.

....anyway. The point is, do not be fucking insane people, Biden is not going to step down and frankly shouldn't, don't read the NYT (as noted, they've openly admitted to sabotaging him for personal ego reasons so I don't know why the hell anyone would listen to what they have to say about him), this is still an eminently winnable election, and let's go get those motherfucking fascists. I want Trump in jail and all of SCOTUS and the MAGAGOP fucking crying over it because they fucking suck. Let's go.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #vote and get off my lawn

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thedragonkween · 7 months ago

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King Baldwin IV Headcanons! ♔🤍♕

A/N: So, here we are. I could not resist this mysterious and tormented king's charm. His silky voice makes me dream! These are some headcanons I've collected off the top of my head. The Reader is implied to be female and married to Baldwin IV. Please, do feel free to hit my inbox to ramble about our king because I'm literally dying of pining and yearning.

tags: female!reader x baldwin iv of jerusalem (from kingdom of heaven); reader is married to baldwin iv of jerusalem; fluff; slight angst towards the end

wc: 1150k

reccomended songs to listen to while reading: "Summertime Sadness" by Hildegard von Blingin; "Right Here" by Ashes Remain; "Blood, Sweat, Tears" by BTS (orchestral version)

"Many are the tales of the King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and of his Queen. Despite the varying accounts of their deeds, each one of them agrees on one aspect: the King of Jerusalem loved his Queen dearly, and the world is richer for it".

Baldwin IV is mysterious, intense, valiant, noble and utterly devoted to you, his Queen. But what does this devotion look like?

Firstly, he would believe in you like no other and would always be ready to give you his best advice whenever the weight of your responsibility becomes too much. Foreign rulers would soon learn of your qualities - there would hardly be a piece of correspondence where the King of Jerusalem does not praise the intellect and insight of his dear wife. He would glance at you from time to time, while you both work at your desks sharing the burden of paperwork, silently thanking God for having sent him not only a beautiful, but reliable life companion as well.

He values your opinions greatly and has the utmost regard for your views on political, military and state matters. Disagreements happen, yet your overall values are aligned, which is why Baldwin understands your vision and where your point comes from. During the discussions regarding complex decisions, he would let you speak and explain, then he would offer his honest thoughts on the matter, should he see another, different way from yours.

Playing chess is a favorite way of spending quality time together in your chambers, away from the chaos of the court. If you know how to play and are proficient at it, he would delight in the thrill of challenge, as he would finally have found a true equal. If you do not know how to play, he would teach you with patience, taking pride whenever you make an unexpected and astute move. He would be such a nerd while he explains the rules to you and would be delighted to see how your mind works when devising a plan.

"Congratulations, dove. You have a checkmate."

I can also see Baldwin taking you on long rides, if his health allows it. He would sweetly check the reins and saddle on your horse before mounting on his steed and leading you away to enjoy the cool early morning breeze, before the heat of Jerusalem becomes too sweltering. You would have a nice and secluded spot to enjoy and to pretend that you are a couple of young lovers without responsibilities and crowns weighing on your heads.

Your presence brings him safety and comfort, which is what would convince him to remove his mask when he is alone with you and the physicians. He would especially love to rest his head on your la as you gently caress his curls while the physicians tend to his skin. It is a sacred moment. He does not know how he went so long without your presence during this delicate time. Speaking softly to each other, you would distract him from the pain with talk of your hometown, fairy tales from your culture, or even simply reflecting on a happening of that day. On these occasions, you learn how to best take care of him, watching the physician tend to his arm while you tend to the other, delicately dabbing the cloth over his wounded skin. Baldwin feels so protected and safe in your presence. He thinks you are God’s greatest gift to him.

Now, jealousy. Baldwin knows he boasts the honor of having an exquisite flower such as yourself to call his own. As do powerful men and courtiers from distant lands. Many covet your loveliness as one would a precious gem. Should one of these foolish people try to take you from him or even stare at you for too long to be considered proper, they would be met with a pure force to be reckoned with. Should a knight’s eye linger on you for too long, he would be quick to put him in place in his signature glacial, elegant way. Before long, everyone learns not to disrespect the Queen consort of Jerusalem.

“Perhaps you would have understood my point, had you not been so insolently ogling my wife”. He takes out his whip. “On your knees. You will pay for insulting the Queen”.

He would protect you with his life. He swore to protect Jerusalem and, as its Queen, that includes first of all you. Should a courtier doubt your devotion and mistake it for thirst for power, or should he learn of an orchestrated attempt on your life, he would waste no time in employing his best forces in your service to defend you.

His enemies and templars alike fear him, yet with you he is as gentle as the morning breeze that gently caresses Jerusalem. This powerful king who makes armies tremble and kingdoms shake is the same person who holds and kisses your hand (when in public, bringing your fingers to the lips of his mask), who silently admires your loveliness from afar and sighs to himself, who longs for your warmth after a tiring day.

He would write you letters. Lots of them. And not always when he is away. Maybe he just liked the way the sun reflected in your eyes that morning. Or maybe when you helped a servant, he was moved by your kindness. Your every action inspires him, so much so that he has to let out his thoughts on paper. You have a pretty wooden box brimming with delicate papers penned by Baldwin in your honor. He is not only the King of Jerusalem, but also the king of pining, of yearning. Even when he has you near, he yearns for you.

I love to imagine him letting you accompany him to battle. He would love it too, in theory. You make him so strong, the both of you would be quite the sight, meeting your enemies head on, as one, donning your best armors. Yet, at the same time I cannot imagine him resting easy knowing that a loose arrow, a desperate soldier seeking glory for killing the Queen of Jerusalem, or fatigue and sickness could take you from him. It pains his heart to be parted from you, yet he cannot risk your safety. Instead, Baldwin would trust you with ruling the kingdom. He has absolute faith in your intelligence, willpower and cleverness, especially after all he has taught you about running the realm. He longs for you every second he’s away from Jerusalem, yet his heart is at peace knowing his kingdom is in the most capable hands.

When he feels that his time on this Earth is nearing his end, he calls for his most trusted advisors, including Balian and Tiberias. He would ask them, almost begging, to protect you always, at all costs, when he is no longer there to do so. Balian and Tiberias would exchange a quick glance to each other, vowing to respect their King’s wish until the very end.

“Protect her. Please.” “Always, my Lord”.

Poems, songs and stories would be written in honor of your love even centuries after your passing. Many tales would speak of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and his Queen. Different pieces of art, such as paintings and ballads, would inspire people from all over the world to find a love as devoted and unshakable as yours. Until the very end.

All in all, to love Baldwin means knowing your time together is limited. As is the time of all creatures on Earth. He would beg you to go on after his passing, to live for him. He shall wait for you and protect you from above. Until the very end.

#king baldwin x reader #king baldwin iv x reader #baldwin iv x reader #baldwin x reader #kingdom of heaven #king baldwin #king baldwin iv #koh #kingdom of heaven imagine #kingdom of heaven imagines #mywriting

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katsukikitten · 1 year ago

Text

You've been writing to inmates in prison for almost two years now and have helped many feel more at ease with their current situations and possible futures. So it should come to no surprise when the warden of the most notorious prison seeks out your help with a difficult inmate they can hardly contain. The task proves difficult after you receive your first letter back from Bakugou Katsuki. More infamously known as Ground Zero, and you're not so sure you can help a man this far gone.

wc 6.8k warnings: dunno but he's mean and a villain so read at your own risk. MDNI 18+ content

Congratulations!

You've been selected for a special project due to your credentials with previous inmates. Letters exchanged between you and other inmates have had a positive effect on their rehabilitation which is one step closer to getting them assimilated back to the normalcy of society.

We ask that you help us by reaching out to inmate B-001174 Bakugou, Katsuki. He has not had mail correspondence nor a visitor due to his self isolation since his incarceration. We are hoping that a letter from the most well received correspondent begins to pave the way for a brighter future for B-001174. Please see the below instructions on what topics to avoid for inmate B-001174

Family members of any relation to inmate

Previous crimes by inmate or inmate's affiliates.

Current crimes by inmate's affiliates or any such nature of crime

Current events of any kind including natural disasters, diseases, political elections or anything of relation.

Current hero rankings, change of status or death of any hero since incarceration December 18th 2XXX

Any mention of hero(es) who captured inmate listed as follows : Aizawa, Shouta - Eraserhead, Todoroki, Enji - Endeavor, Toshinori, Yagi - Allmight, Usagiyama, Rumi - Mirko

Current known affiliates are listed as follows : Kirishima, Eijirou, Midoriya, Izuku, Shigaraki, Tomura and Todoroki, Touya.

We appreciate your efforts in brightening the dull lives of inmates and hope you pick up your pen and do what you do best, change lives for the better! Please see the following attachments for instructions on how to address the letter and seal inside the pre-paid postage envelope before dropping it off at any post office.

Remember each letter will be opened and read for any sort of criminal activity before being passed along to the inmate.

Sincerely,

Warden of Tartarus Maximum Prison Facility

You flip the letter over and skim the instructions, the same as they always are expect this time there is an extra line to add, maximum security level ten, as if you had to notate some sort of alert to the mailroom for an extra thorough check of this particular piece of mail. You bite the inside of your lip, toeing off your kitten heels before padding over to your computer with letter in tow.

The request comes as a surprise, mostly because they listed a specific inmate instead of your usual list of inmates who wished to receive mail but had ties cut from their own families or needed some semblance of someone on the outside to speak with. Never asking you to address some sort of conversation with someone who sounded like they didn't want to have one at all.

Snarling your lip when you read the affiliates that you needed to avoid as if their government names gave you any idea of who they were, some of them anyway.

Two with whom you were already exchanging letters with weekly.

Your usual routine to wind down from work is lost to your undying hunger of who this person was. Although you had to admit Bakugou sounded eerily familiar.

A quick search brings up his villain name, Ground Zero, captured during a raid of some sort and he alone needed several heroes for his capture. His quirk was dangerous, explosions detonated by sparks along his forearms and palms from his sweat that contained nitroglycerin and it seemed as if his mental health was just as stable as the fuel to his quirk.

Looking at him wrong set him off and he was powerful enough to level buildings from just a few juls of output from his intense explosions. Still curiosity killed the cat and you delved deeper.

Wondering how Izuku, aka Deku, who was quirkless and Eijirou, aka Blood Riot who could harden his skin, which you knew from their letters, got caught up with a living, breathing nuke.

Thankfully most of the documentation and footage involving Katsuki's arrest was released to the public with redactions and edits of course but what you needed was the raw data.

Finding unofficially released footage from Mirko's body cam, the only surviving body cam between the pursuing heroes. It starts right in the midst of the action, sirens wailing and people screaming in the background as the scene unfolds. Ground Zero and Mirko exchange blows evenly while Endevor tries to ambush him from behind. The hulking blonde smirks, as if he had no blind spot, swinging his large arm backward hitting Endeavor right in the mouth, hard enough it sends him flying. Katsuki's bromine eyes flicker to what must be vantage points off camera as if searching for something.

"Got that pesky ass four eyes on me huh? I'm hurt ya don't wanna play with me properly, hops." He dodges a kick to the chest, sliding back and it's obvious his prowess as a fighter is unmatched, even with his quirk silenced.

"Shut the fuck up. Ya talk too much." Shifting her weight to fein a kick that he catches, pinning her thick leg between his sturdy ribs and strong arm as he wears the nastiest smile. One that Mirko wipes off quickly with a swift kick from her free foot straight to his handsome face. Turning his cheek and blood arcs from his mouth, still he does not stagger nor falter.

He even still has her leg pinned as she stands awkwardly, back arched to him and her bunny tail twitches. The viewer can only see the ground and her free leg but the mic still very much catches what he says next and you're sure the smile he was wearing earlier comes back tenfold.

"Careful hops, ya get any rougher with me and I'll cum."

His laugh echoes shortly after and the sound should not cause your stomach to flip the way it does before the footage abruptly ends.

Taking the time to scroll through a few more pictures and articles, trying to find where it all went wrong when really none of that was your business, still it killed you to know.

And when you fail to find anything, fail to find that butterfly effect that puts his whole life askew, it does little to quell the uneasy feeling that gnaws at the pit of your stomach. If anything it fuels it yet still you rummage your desk for stationary and a pen.

Sealing away the envelope once you were done and setting it by your purse to grab in the morning when you think you'll be braver.

Or maybe less brave as you hesitate by the mail drop off box, your train fast approaching the outside terminal before you shove it into the slot quickly.

Too late to take it back now.

Besides what were the odds he'd even send one back?

"B-001174, got mail." The guard grunts as he slips the already open letter under the cell door, finishing his rounds before the doors would open and the inmates could roam about the pod as they saw fit.

Katsuki snarls, he didn't get mail, letters or pictures or even the cult following he once had he'd scared 'em all off. Tired of all the stupid bullshit they spewed at him, the ideals they placed on him or the words they shoved into his mouth. Worst yet were how they justified their actions, their own wrong doings in the name of Ground Zero, too pussy to even own up to their own actions. Katsuki hated that as much as he hated liars.

Besides he didn't ask for all that shit, didn't care. He just wanted to watch the world burn.

Wanted to set it on fire and Katsuki's philosophy was that anything was kindling.

That everything is kindling.

And he thinks he should just ignite the smallest spark despite the quirk "silencing" cuffs and let the letter be devoured by the heat of his palms.

But the return address catches his eye, the name does. It's familiar in a way he can't quite place yet. Pulling the paper out of the envelope in the meantime. The first thing he notices is the faint almost perfumey smell of coconut from the paper, not from spraying the stationary but as if it were lotion rubbing across the parchment as you wrote in long looping letters, for a moment he finds the smell pleasant. His poisonous bromine eyes slide over the letter with ease.

Dear Bakugou,

I heard you don't get letters very often, if any, so I hope this one finds you well. The weather is warming up quickly, the cicadas are starting to scream even though it's barely June, we'll all be sweltering come August. Summer is my favorite season, do you have a favorite? Work slows down around this time and they usually grant us extra leave so we can enjoy the weather, which is quite nice. I hope you're getting to enjoy the sun as well.

I know cooking is one of your favorite things, I can see why. It can be relaxing or make you feel good to nourish someone else. What other hobbies do you have aside from cooking? Any favorite books or authors? Maybe I can send your favorite one in! Just let me know.

Do you have everything you need? Do you need any money for commissary? Don't hesitate to ask if you need anything at all, I'm only a letter away.

Hope to hear from you and maybe soon I can call you Katsuki.

Much Love

He snorts as he reads the last line and it finally dawns on him from where he knows your name. Lifting himself out of his prison cot with ease, the cheap thing groaning from his bulk as he exits his cell. Heading towards the neighboring cell that holds Deku and Riot, shoving his way into the too cramped space for the bulking men.

"Ka-kaachan!" Izuku chirps, surprised to see the hot headed blonde out of his cell and especially surprised to see Bakugou in his own. Lingering by Izuku's half with a quirked brow, his eyes roaming until they found the hidden stack of papers.

"Gonna grab breakfast with us?" Kirishima asks as he watches large hands snatch at the pile. Instantly Izuku stands, eyes darkening as he steps towards Katsuki.

"Put those down, Kaachan." It's that fake polite smile Izuku wears before a fight, the kind that never reaches his eyes and Bakugou doesn't heed the warning, "Please."

It's clipped and now Kirishima thinks to rise, doesn't want either of them to do solitary or to deal with the month long bickering if they do get into a physical fight.

Katsuki looks over the letters, reading them quickly and appreciating that Izuku is meticulous enough to keep them in chronological order, each one signed off the same way. Much love.

Such bullshit.

Izuku shoves Bakugou when he still scowls down at the papers that also smell like coconut. Katsuki drops the letters unceremoniously and Izuku scrambles to keep them from hitting the concrete floor. Bakugou already on Kirishima's side who watches with a confused glare.

"What are you-" But Kirishima doesn't get to say much else as Katsuki lifts the thin mattress from the metal frame to find the hidden letters. Tucked away safely as if the battle worn villain took comfort in the false words in shiny black ink.

Same return address, same name, same bull shit sign off.

"Katsuki!" Kirishima shoves him and the blonde hardly moves, Eijirou's skin half hardening out of habit before he tries to shove again. Katsuki hits his forearm harshly, a soft pop in warning although neither could do too much with the amount of sedation and silencing that came from the collar from around their thick throats. Izuku sans silencing cuffs, has no worries about a part of him being dulled. He was built like an ox with the metabolism of a pubescent teen despite being in his late twenties so sedatives or mood stabilizers hardly have any effect.

Bakugou tosses the letters onto Kirishima's scratchy blanket before he scoffs.

"Tsk, believe that bullshit?" He's rolling his eyes as he leaves the cell with nothing but the rustle of paper as they try to rehide what they act like is their dirty little secret.

God weak hearted fools were so fucking annoying.

Post through the prison system could take some time, especially when it came to newer exchanges. It could be anywhere between two weeks to two months before you saw a reply from Katsuki. If you got one at all.

But the thought of his phantom reply slips to the back of your head what with your current workload and the other correspondents so when you see a sealed envelope the prison's return address you think nothing of it.

Not until you open it to see an open envelope with your address but instead of your name is spelled out Fake Bitch.

Blinking furiously you pull out the letter, unfolding it quickly to let your eyes scan over the page, each word burning into your retinas.

Piece of shit,

Such a pathetic fuckin slut, writing any and every desperate man behind bars you think is hot, hopin you'll get a conjugal visit. Already fucked everyone at surface level ya gotta try prison dick?

Or is it worst than that? Mommy and daddy didn't love ya enough? Didn't give ya enough attention so you look for it in anyone that'll give ya the time of day? Prey on those with no one to talk to knowing you'd get a reply out of desperation.

Lickin knives all ya know sweetheart? Pretty fuckin scummy if ya ask me.

Fuck off and die,

Bakugou Katsuki

Now you've received your fair share of mean and asshole letters but this? This was different.

This felt personal.

It was rule number one you'd given yourself when you were asked to start penning letters while in a shitty place yourself.

And yet here you were breaking it for some asshat who thought the cityscape was his to destroy.

Heart ringing in your ears as you try to calm yourself, counting your breaths until you finally could see straight. Penning up something simple yet effective telling yourself that even if he didn't reply it didn't matter.

You drop it into the mail the next day, two weeks later the same guard is slipping another opened letter under Bakugou's cell door. A snarl to his lip, he didn't expect you to reply and if he was being honest he may have forgotten about you, still the envelope was addressed to his inmate number and no longer is his name written in your cute script.

While you may think you know everything there is to know about life and me, I'd like to point out your position over mine.

Last I checked I'm not miles and miles in the ground, under heavy security, among other things a civilian wouldn't be privy to. However I will put it into lame man's terms as it seems your cognitive abilities have declined.

I'm not the one behind bars, asshole.

Much Hate

Bakugou clicks his tongue, he was used to the insult, wore it proudly most days but he knew his first letter would go one of two ways.

One, you'd cry when you read it and never replied to him again, which was his hope or two there was a very slim chance he'd get under your skin enough you'd feel the innate need to respond and defend yourself.

Bakugou does what he does best and burrows further under your pretty skin twirling the pen he finds in the library with ease as he takes to writing out a delicious reply.

Mail from Tartarus normally came on Wednesday or Thursday as if someone at the facility always forgot to send it out at the beginning of the week. So it became a part of your routine to check your PO Box you set up in a prefecture over in order to preserve your safety should something ever go awry with any of your pen pals or to receive online purchases. Mail day used to be a day you looked forward to, something to help you get through the remainder of your work week but today it was a day you dreaded.

The excitement from seeing the others' responses in the mail is overshadowed by one particular envelope that slips out of the Manila folder that all of the letters to the same correspondent were sent in to save postage.

You should be reading Touya's letter or hell anyone else's for that matter, yet here you stood, going for that obnoxious scrawl as he still refused to spell out your name and instead gave you some horrible insult.

Pathetic Slut

If lying to yourself by writing half ass disingenuine letters to prisoners out of pity makes ya feel like yer changing the world then by all fucking means write away sweetheart.

Just don't be surprised when you get an asshole response from an asshole behind bars.

Cause we both know that's what you think of all of us don'tchya?

Die,

Bakugou Katsuki

It shouldn't bother you, it shouldn't burrow so deep into your skin that his inky words scratch at your bones. Like his fingers could dig around in the marrow like maggots yet still it makes your cheeks heat. Makes your eyes burn from frustration and lack of blinking as your palms sweat.

Soles of your feet burning as you walk further into your apartment to rummage through the drawers of your desk. Uncaring how things topple over as you furiously grab for a permanent marker, pens and books scattering over the hardwood floors.

Heart pounding as it resounds through your body like metal striking a bell. Each beat faster, harder than the last until you think your vision starts to ehb at the edges from how much hatred burns away at any of the kindness you built up over the last decade.

Snapping the marker in half by the time you're done writing your final letter to the asshole.

FUCK

YOU

You don't read it, don't care if it makes it past screening and he never sees it at all. Shoving it into one of your personal envelopes on your desk slapping on a floral postage stamp before stomping down to the express box that sat just outside of your apartment complex.

It takes a full week for you to calm down, another week to stop thinking about it daily, and one more week to even reply to the letters you got almost a month ago.

An email comes in from the post office, alerting you to something being placed in your box. You hope it's the new sun dress you bought as retail therapy after a long week and an even bigger bottle of booze that you'd drained. Spending quite a pretty penny on something you didn't even really have an occasion to wear it to.

More like a nice date, the type of dress you could dress up or down depending on what sorts of accessories you paired with it.

Taking the train three stops past your own to head into the post office. Turning the key to your decent sized box finding within the metal your promised package.

And on top of that a familiar manila folder with the return address to Tartarus.

You grit your teeth, holding onto the mail harder than you should as you take those three long stops back home. Swallowing thickly as you climb your steps, the folder and plastic bag package punctured from your sharp nails as you quickly press in your seven digit key code to get into your apartment and out of the sweltering mid August air.

When your door shuts it closed off the sound of the screaming cicadas and the few crickets that lie in the green space beside your apartment as you try to force yourself to follow your nightly routine.

Remove shoes, take off makeup, eat, shower, sleep.

But that damn folder was burning a hole into your fingers as you go to your desk, rocking your chair side to side before you just rip it open like you'd rip off a bandaid.

This time the letter addresses you in a new way.

Sweetheart,

I dare you to come say that shit to my face. You fuckin better show up Saturday other wise I'll let your precious Izu and Eiji know just how much of a fake bitch ya really are. Imagine what it would do to them? Break their hearts I'm sure.

Ya'd hate to mess with their progress wouldn't ya?

Don't forget to wear something cute, it'd be nice to see some fat tits in my face at the very least. If a shitty woman like you even owns anything relatively sexy.

Fuck off

Bakugou Katsuki

You see red, breathing deeply as you re-read the letter again, who the fuck was this asshole? Black mailing you into visiting him so it wouldn't hurt your other correspondents because Bakugou was so fucking selfish.

So black out angry you don't seem to wake up, not when you put yourself in that sleek summer sun dress that went to your mid thigh, not when you stare at your angry scowl as you apply light make up, and especially not on the hour drive and then two hour ferry ride to Tartarus. Especially not during the twenty minute descent in a cramped elevator box with a guard in front and behind you with AKs clipped to their chests, the sweltering heat seeping down this low in the ground due to body heat and poor ventilation of the prison.

Not until the buzzer of the barred door in front of you screams its demands, that the handle was "live" and could be opened by the guard standing in the cage between the hallway that led back to freedom and the other where you could already see toxic bromine burning into your skin.

This was a bad idea. This was a really fucking bad idea.

You swallow thickly, it was too late to turn back now wasn't it? The door had already swung shut as the guard came closer to you for one final inspection.

"Dress is kinda short." Katsuki can overhear the guard mumble to you, can see how the guard's fingers twitch and for some reason his own do too. He watches how the guard lingers, how the man's hand press against your body and bunches up your dress as he pats you down a little too roughly. How you bite your lip when the man squeezes your ribs and under the weight of your breasts a little too roughly.

Katsuki is starting to see red, sweat begins to collect on his brow. He hasn't even fully seen you at least not without an obstructed view but already he can tell he likes what he sees.

Likes how the dress clings to parts of you you'd favor, the parts you want to really highlight. How the hem flusters higher with each step of your strappy flat shoes.

Loves the scowl that pinches up your cute face when the door buzzes to allow you into the room with him and another six guards. Likes how you straighten your spine as if you've gotten fresh resolve when you come in.

Looking at him like he was trash and he smirks, like how you don't recoil from him despite how he looks now.

Plexiglass spit guard with metal framing afixed to his face to keep more than his salvia to himself, more so to keep his gnashing teeth away from people's skin. How his throat is encircled with a thick black collar with a red light set far past stun and closer to kill that would send an electric pulse if he misbehaved but only if they could reach their remote fast enough.

How the silver cuffs around his thick wrists chain him to the table top, thick forearms exposed from him rolling up his bright orange suit that was harsh on the eyes thanks to the flickering fluorescent lighting overhead. Soft ash blonde hair messy at the top with a self given undercut beneath, iris so bloody red it was as if he was born straight from the calf of Ares himself.

"Hey Sweetheart." He purrs and his voice is pure sin.

Pure fucking sin.

Sending a jolt straight to your clit as his pretty lips curl up into a deadly smirk, showing his sharp canines.

Bakugou can't contain the feeling of triumph that dances in his veins, purposely egging you on in his letter with the closest Saturday knowing you'd be allowed to come on such short notice. See, most visitors needed to have thorough background checks and intensive mental testing before coming to meet anyone in maximum security five hundred meters below sea level.

But the conniving blonde knew you were special.

Knew the warden of Tartarus favored you and would allow you to skip these precautions, especially after what that dumbass thinks you've done. In less than a month of writing to him, that damn Deku finally added Inko-san back to his visiting list, actually came to the visit and cupped her hands. Murmuring on and on that her baby boy with the wavy emerald curls was okay. Inko cried and returned every month since.

No different for Kirishima either, adding Fat Gum, who was like a father figure to him during their shared time at UA, to his visitor list. Surprisingly Taishiro came, still comes, him and Inko car pool together.

Not even a few heartbeats pass between the two of you before you feel your tongue slicing up the sensitive skin of the roof of your mouth. Of the hard bone of your teeth.

"Fuck. You." The words drip with sticky poison that even one of the guards behind him flinches but not Bakugou.

No never Bakugou Katsuki, the Ground Zero himself who leveled a city for the fucking fun of it

He smiles, both sides of his mouth curling up and it should be disturbing how much he obviously gets off on your frustration, on your hate. But it isn't, it's almost mesmerizing how he looks at you. Like you're something to triumph and conquer, something he wants to keep for himself.

With that you turn to leave, skirt fluttering from the movement and Katsuki can see the tattoo on your upper thigh, the ink making his mouth salivate as he wonders if he can find any more you've got hidden on that fine body.

He lunges despite the rattling chains that keep him close to the table, still he has enough leeway to grab onto your arm in one giant hand. Foolishly you try to pull free.

"Oh come on sweetheart. I've got a whole hour of play time for this. Yer not leaving, sit down."

His grip on you is tight, his hand big enough to engulf half of your forearm and it gets tighter still. Hot palm making your bones creak from the pressure as he smiles up at you cruelly. All you can do is glare down at him, bore all of your hate where the two of you are connected, his skin feels electric against yours.

"Ya know, I could probably still blow your arm off." He doesn't bother to say it quietly, chuckles when you look at the quirk silencing cuffs and collar he dons, "They ain't shit against strong quirks."

Your eyes flash, anger spiking your blood and stupidly you strike. Hand stinging as badly as the tears that come to your eyes and threaten to fall past your lash line. Clawed fingers met with the metal framing of the glass spit guard mask that covers his mouth. Still one of your claws cuts his cheeks and he howls with laughter.

"Like I said-" He yanks you down harshly, playful tone from his voice gone as your ribs smack into the edge of the metal table, puffs of hot breath fogging the glass of his spit guard, "Sit."

The awkward angle forces your knees to bend, settling on to the cold metal stool while his warm fingers leave blossoms of black and blue on the skin. As if returning the favor for the cut.

"I can feel your heart pounding princess,yer pussy throbin this hard too?" He licks his lips, laughs when you lean away from him in disgust, "Ya like it. All sluts play hard to get at first."

Your eyes flicker to the guards behind him, all six pretend not to notice, panic shoots through your veins and the realization of just how bad of a fucking idea this was settles over you harshly. Like ice water flowing from the nape of your neck.

He follows your gaze, even cranes his head like he didn't know who was behind him and exactly where they stood.

"Oh them? They ain't gonna do shit. They're too scared of me. Blew a guy's head off last week." He smiles and one of the guards suddenly finds the floor interesting, "Do ya know how drugged up I am right now baby? How much force these cuffs have to use to bring my quirk down to half power?"

Choosing not to respond you let your eyes fall back on his handsome face watching it snarl as you ignore him.

Oh he'd make you see him.

"What cat got yer tongue now ya scared cause I'm so strong? Invincible?" Your eyes narrow as he speaks the arrogance of this man is far beyond your comprehension.

"You bleed like every other man." He loves the way you speak, how you wield that sharp tongue. How he wants it pressed and slashing over his own as he's two fingers deep into your tight cunt, moaning into his mouth.

He brings the thick digits of his free hand parting gift you bestowed upon him. The long thin slash as rough pads bring smeared blood into view so he can lick away the dark red beads.

"Bloody men are usually the most dangerous, you never know if it's his or that of another's." He lets his hot thumb roll over the cut, cauterizing the small wound hoping it scars.

Eyes widening as he blatantly uses his quirk as if there weren't armed guards behind him. You're watching his eyes closely as he does and finally you realize what he said is true. There is a dullness to them that was lacking in the raw footage you saw all those months ago.

Then his eyes were vibrant, sharp and slicing, much more intense then the hazy glare he gives you now. It didn't make him any less of an apex predator.

Still watching you, recording your small movements and committing your soft skin to his memory as he studies you.

"Got a quirk?" He grunts out after a moment, after he collects whatever information he was looking for, "I wanna guess first. Manipulation?"

He smirks at his own joke and you roll your eyes, trying to ignore how his thumb swipes at the underside of your forearm idly. How the motion twists your stomach violently with dizzying emotions.

Rolling your eyes before you scoff an answer, "No. Besides you expect me to manipulate through what? Ink?"

"Ya never know. Went to school with some asshole whose quirk was comic book sound effects." He leans back never letting go but now his hand is around your wrist. His fingers twitch when he looks at yours, fights the urge to roughly lace them with his own.

"Well I don't. Manipulate I mean." You adjust in your seat, feeling uncomfortable under his scrutiny, "And I won't disclose whether I have a quirk or not."

"Haaah? Worried I'll like it?" When you don't answer he adds, "Is it compatible with mine?"

Slowly blinking at him trying not to read into what you think he means. He groans at your silence, the higher dosage of his morning meds finally catching up making him a little lethargic. Taking his edge off when all he wants to do is rise over the crashing wave of the pending high he can barely keep at bay and whisk you out of the depths of hell the two of you currently sit in.

"So then what? You just used regular words to manipulate them?" He fights back a yawn.

"Who?" Your ribs still ache from his actions earlier, it doesn't warn you like it should.

"Don't play fuckin stupid, Sweetheart." He's lurching into your space again, hand moving back over your bruise. It makes your stomach clench when it shouldn't, especially not as the chains rattle against the metal table top, serving as a heavy reminder of the setting of this conversation.

Still his breath comes in quick puffs as it fogs up the glass again, "Shitty hair. Deku."

Your brows furrow for a moment, another groan from him.

"For fucks sake." Light squeeze of your arm as he spits their names, "Fuckin nerdy ass Izuku. Eijirou."

"I can't talk about them." Looking away from his darkened eyes that flash with a fury of emotion.

"Who's stoppin ya? Them?" He tilts his head towards the guards, "I told ya-"

"B-001174, you have five minutes left for visitation." A voice crackled over an old speaker in the visitation cell, "Please remove your hands from the guest or we will apply force."

The small light on his collar flashes red and he just smirks, looking up, well above your head. Staring directly at the warden like he knows exactly where he stood behind the two way mirror.

"Yea? You'll apply force? Go ahead. Nothin but a little shock t' me but t' her? She'll die warden." There is no mirth in his smirk, lips twitching as his eyes are shrouded in dark warning, "And we wouldn't want that would we?"

The way he speaks sends a chill down your spine, the haze of whatever sedative they had him on is now gone and you're left sitting across from those vibrant radioactive eyes. Burning through the mirror to sear the warden's skin in a threat, a promise.

A buzz rings out as the seventh guard comes in, he scrunches his nose and it makes his oddly shaped mustache twitch.

"Miss." He grunts holding out his hand for you to take too close in your personal space for your liking. Slapping it out of your face before following your right arm down to where Katsuki held fast. Peeling off his thick digits with your finely manicured claws.

He hisses at the loss of contact, glaring at the guard when his hands hover close and the older man is smart enough not to antagonize a literal monster. Katsuki stands suddenly, a scream comes from the bolts securing metal to metal as he rips the table out of the ground, unable to break the chains for now.

Everyone but Bakugou in the room freezes, guns cocked and aimed at the bulking villain who rose to his full height, sticking his prison issued white shoe onto the seat he just sat on to push down roughly. Thick thigh muscles straining against the fabric of the bright orange pants. A smile to his face when the chains finally snap and he can move his hands more freely before ripping off the plexiglass spit guard letting it clink on to the ground. His large hands run through his hair as if to fix it.

"I'm entitled to a proper fuckin good bye." He hisses at everyone in the room, they keep their guns aimed at him but make no move to pull any trigger.

Katsuki stalks closer, a wall of muscle, broad chest and shoulders, slim waist that leads down to powerful legs and you try not to let your breath catch in your throat.

Try not to let the big bad wolf win by letting him know just how scared you were. Over how impressive it was that he snapped reinforced titanium chains so easily.

He's well within your arms reach now, so close heat radiates from his chest.

"I'll see ya soon, Sweetheart." He bids you a final goodbye, waving his fingers that pop with burning caramel explosions. You're not sure why it sets you off, maybe it was the way he wore that stupid smirk on his face, maybe it was the way he demonstrated his power or his dominance in an attempt to intimidate you one last time.

Maybe it's the way he was arrogant enough to think you'd waste six hours round trip on his ass ever again.

Either way it makes your temper flair, burrows deep into your subdermis to scarpe at your bones one final time before you unknowingly seal your own fate. Not knowing how his body would react to your parting words.

"There won't be a next time. I came here for one thing and that was to say fuck you." Delivered with just as much clotting venom as it was before, middle finger held high.

His smirk turns deadly, blowing out a snort as he leans closer as if to share a secret. You can smell the cheap commissary soap that clings to his skin that's starting to lose out to the rapidly building nimbus of smoking caramel that clouds the air as his lips press to your ear.

"Don't have t'. I'll come to you." He pulls back and winks as you're guided out of the room, glare fixed on him as he stands unbothered.

He's lying, prisoners lie all the time especially if they think they can get the upper hand. He couldn't come to you. He couldn't escape prison for starters and lastly there was no way in hell he'd ever find out where you lived. The prison made sure of that by always including a fresh envelope with their own return address in the top left corner, you should know. You only triple checked each time you sealed away the letter, even a fourth time at the post box staring down at the address on the envelope making sure both were correct.

So fuck Bakugou Katsuki for being a dirty liar, fucking hypocrite.

Shoving yourself into an oversized shirt after your body shower you finally get to plop down into bed. Relishing the feel of fresh sheets and blankets as you sigh deeply. It had been a long, long day and no amount of self care could get his toxic blood red eyes out of your head.

Switching on the TV to pull up some show to numb your mind with familiarity when the channel cuts out. Breaking news flashing across the screen makes your body go rigid.

A prison break from Tartarus has occurred in the late evening hours, several high profile villains are believed to have escaped such as Shigaraki Tomura, Todoroki Touya, aka Dabi, Kirishima Eijirou aka Blood Riot, Midoriya Izuku aka Deku and Bakugou Katsuki better known as Ground Zero. Please do not approach suspected escapees, please report any suspicious person or activities immediately. Most importantly keep all doors and windows locked at all times. I repeat do not engage with the inmates.

A knock comes from your left, making you jump out of your skin as you fist the sheets. A cold sweat breaking out over your skin in goose flesh as your hearing rings in your ears. Unable to bring yourself to look at the sliding glass door to your balcony just yet as if you could ignore it and the cause of the sound would simply go away.

Another rapt of knuckles pulls your attention once more before you finally dare to peek to see glowing red eyes peering in. The devil himself at your door and you knew better than to let him in.

Knew better that a locked door couldn't keep him out.

Bromine burning in the night like ever fanned flames, orange jumpsuit obnoxiously out of place against the night sky, stained in deep burgundy red and ash grays, the same colors streaking his face before he knocks again. But this time it's in warning, hard enough to rattle the door that you both know he could rip off the track with ease.

"How- how did you?" Teeth chattering that you grit closed still refusing to give in to his tactics until he presses a small envelope against the glass. Your personal envelope with your real home address listed for return.

Panic bubbles up your throat in a scream that dies at the back of your teeth as you sit frozen a minute longer while he gives a predatory grin, large hands pressing against the glass before his palms glow bright orange. Brighter than his jumpsuit before the glass shatters and your scream finally escapes your lungs.

In an instant he's towering over you, palms pressing into biting shards as he cages you against the plush comforter dipping his head low so he can nose at your throat, hot palm at your ribs. Leave a searing bite pulling a strangled yelp from your soft lips that makes him laugh before his mouth is at your ear for the second time today. Finally speaking dangerously low.

"Told ya I'd see ya soon, Sweetheart."

#bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou x you #bakugo katsuki x reader #kitten writes 🖤🐈‍⬛ ✍🏻

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getosfavoritewife · 11 months ago

Text

The Sun Always Rises

✮⋆˙ General Jing Yuan has a way of bringing sunlight to you, regardless of how much you avoid the warm rays. (1.5k words)

✮⋆˙ A/N: first post!! jing yuan has such a lazy/cozy feel and I'm still trying to gauge his personality so sorry if it's a bit ooc!!

✮⋆˙ Warning(s)/Content: forgemaster!reader; implications of mental health concerns (nothing heavy); can be read as platonic or romantic; fluffy fluff, teasing

✮⋆˙ jing yuan x gn!reader

Hearing three knocks against your door on a sunny winter evening could only signify one thing.

Not even trying to conceal the lack of surprise on your face, you open the door for your expected visitor; as usual, Jing Yuan greets you with a pleasant smile, hands comfortably clasped behind his back as he strides in like he owns the place, opens the curtains, and makes himself at home.

“Arbiter General,” you murmur, almost as if scripted.

“Forgemaster,” he replies in turn with a twinkle in his eyes, also as expected.

You don’t ask if he wants tea, opting to pour two cups and place them on the table as you both sit down. Forgemaster Yingxing had always taught you to be polite to guests, but that was a very long time ago, and Jing Yuan wasn’t just any guest.

“There’s a festival in Aurum Alley this evening,” Jing Yuan muses as he eyes the tea with interest, picking the small cup up as he gives the hot liquid a gentle blow and careful sip.

You know where he’s going with this, so at this point, the best course of action is feigned indifference and avoidance. “And you came all the way over here to let me know? Especially during such a busy day at The Seat of Divine Foresight?”

You take a ginger sip of the tea, grimacing as it burns the tip of your tongue, before placing it back down on the table. Master Yingxing’s tea was far superior to yours anyway—if he could see the hot garbage you’d brewed, he would have scolded your skills all afternoon.

Jing Yuan’s voice brings you out of your thoughts. “Astute as always. You should get out of the house more.”

“I leave the house,” you try not to sound defensive, squinting at the man sitting across from you. “I go to the forge every day.”

“Other than there?”

“And… I went to the market last week,” you grumble, rooting around in your brain for excuses. Lamely, all you come up with is a throwaway line about being too busy that you know Jing Yuan won’t buy. Anyone else would accept the lies that rolled off your tongue like second nature, but not Jing Yuan. He knew you and your habits all too well.

He stands up, dusting his pants off with a lazy smile. “Wonderful, grab your coat.”

“No, Jing Yuan. No.” You respond too quickly, shooting up as you wrack your brain for an excuse.

The softness with which he calls your name is lost to the roaring silence of the room and you know what face he’s making without even looking.

That corner above the cupboard really needs dusting. Master Yingxing would sneeze because of the dust, and he’d blame allergy season. Maybe tonight—

“Only for a little while,” he coaxes, as he swipes a strand of hair from obscuring your eyes. Maybe that’s what makes you meet his eyes: golden and full of life as usual, albeit with his dark circles that seemed worse than before.

“I’ll think about it,” you sigh tiredly, reaching up to run your fingers under his eyes. “You should sleep more, Jing Yuan. You look tired.”

A laugh rumbles out of him at that as he closes his eyes and leans into your touch. You can’t help but let the corners of your mouth quirk up in response. “Don’t let the others at The Seat of Divine Foresight hear you say that.”

“If only you would stop sneaking away at the sight of paperwork, maybe they wouldn’t be so wary of your work ethic,” you scold halfheartedly.

Jing Yuan simply watches you, an adoring smile peeking out that makes you want to push him away from you, embarrassed. Instead, you card your fingers through his hair, murmuring how his ribbon is coming loose as you free it from his snowy locks.

He sighs, letting his eyes flutter shut as you tug through his fluffy hair, replicating his usual hairstyle with practiced ease. You let your thoughts wander to when you used to re-tie his hair every day after it came loose during sparring while Master Yingxing went to go meet with sword master Jingliu and the others.

“How’s Yanqing’s training coming along?” Breaking the delicate silence, your voice always sounds unfamiliar these days; the results of less use, you suppose.

A golden eye cracks open to peer at you, and Jing Yuan lets out another sigh, this time more rueful. “You know how he tends to be. It still surprises me the speed with which he is able to pick up on new techniques and skills, but that obsession with winning and losing…” Jing Yuan trails off. “It’s like I say, if you treat him as a child, he'll put on the airs of an adult. If you treat him as an adult, he'll show the temperament of a child.”

“It’s a difficult age. Remember how you used to be?”

You bite back a snicker at the mock-offended look Jing Yuan shoots you.

“I don’t quite remember it like that,” he says. “I believe I was a joy to be around at every age.”

“I’m sure you remember it like that.”

“How else could you remember it?”

You take a break from playing with his hair to flick him on the forehead, at which he lets out a soft hiss, rubbing the small red mark and catching your hand before you can give him another one. “So mean.”

With a scoff, you make no move to remove your hand from his grip, letting yourself relax in his grasp. “You were nothing short of a terror. Anytime I tried to hang out with you it was always ‘Let’s spar here!’ or ‘Extra training is basically hanging out!’. I got so sick of you that I told Master Yingxing to stop meeting Master Jingliu when I was around.”

“Was I… really like that?” You can’t help but laugh at Jing Yuan’s face, ignoring the smile creeping onto his face at the sight of your laughter.

“All I’m saying is that he’ll grow out of it, just like you did. Kids are desperate to prove themselves at that age. You ought to praise him a little more,” you advise him softly.

“I give praise where it is deserved,” Jing Yuan places your clasped hands on his chest with fake affrontedness, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he huffs in amusement.

“Yet I am expected to praise you even when you are undeserving?”

“I hadn’t realized there were times where I was ever undeserving of praise?” You can’t help to smack him with the hand that was resting on his chest as he pretends to ponder.

“Speaking of Yanqing though—” you start before Jing Yuan interrupts.

“I thought we were speaking about me?”

The roll of your eyes seemed to simply be an intrinsic reaction to Jing Yuan’s teases after all these years of dealing with his painfully fatherly sense of humor.

“General.”

The pleased smile on his face only curled higher. “I’m listening.”

“As I was saying, Yanqing’s birthday is approaching this month. Maybe it’s time he finally receives a sword from the Forgemaster on his birthday this year?”

“I can already imagine his tears of joy. He still asks when he can meet you sometimes. I admit I have yet to give him an answer in fear that he will spend every moment not used for training to instead bother you incessantly at your forge.”

“Like father, like son, I suppose. Send him around—it’s truly no bother. It would also help me figure out a suitable blade for him.”

You pretend to not see the way Jing Yuan’s brows knit together at your teasing jab.

“Come watch us train sometime soon. To help you gauge his fighting style, of course,” Jing Yuan remarks lightly.

“Of course,” you echo. Giving him a look before sighing, you grab your coat off the hook, opening the door for him as you slip it on. “Only for a little while at the festival, please. And no buying or winning me anything while we’re there.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t even try to hide the smile unfurling on his face and you know the next words that come out of his mouth are bound to be an easy lie. “Wouldn’t dream of anything else, Forgemaster.”

From spending every free minute together as kids to only seeing him when he came knocking on your door every single day. No matter what happened, the sun always rose the next day. And no matter what happened, your Jing Yuan was always there.

thanks for reading!! ✮⋆˙

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letters-to-lgbt-kids · 16 days ago

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(Content warning: US election/politics)

My dear lgbt+ kids,

Over the last few days, the phrase “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst” came to my mind a lot.

My post with safety tips (things you can do now that may potentially help when project 2025 comes) got a lot of notes, and many people added on their own advice or ideas. I wrote that post when I was still very much in the initial stage of shock over the election result. I wrote it because I felt really helpless and enraged and scared and heartbroken… and I just felt like I had to do something, anything, to help before the world goes to hell. I guess that’s a feeling a lot of us had or are still having.

I didn’t want to - or maybe I just couldn’t at that stage - talk about hope in that post. How could I watch a fascist criminal become one of the most powerful men on earth and then go on my silly little blog to ramble about hope? In fact, I told you that you don’t need to feel optimistic, but you need to take care of yourself. You need to be kind to yourself.

What I didn’t say (and should have said) is that taking care of yourself IS hope.

None of the safety tips I shared or the ones you guys added would matter if it wasn’t for hope. We need to believe in a future to prepare for it. To fight for it.

If we didn’t have hope, we wouldn’t make appointments to get an IUD or a flu shot. We wouldn’t share advice on which health products to stock up on. We wouldn’t remind each other to check in and connect with each other. We wouldn’t share advice and resources and ideas with each other. If we believed we are all doomed and there’s no future, we’d do none of that - because you wouldn’t fight for a future if there wasn’t one.

Every time I see that post popping up in my notifications, I am reminded that there is hope. Because hope isn’t just a feeling. It’s an action. And I see you taking that action.

We are here and we are queer and we are willing to fight for our future. And as long as that’s true, there is hope.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

#lgbt #lgbt+#us politics

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honeyxbee · 3 months ago

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Losing Game ― L Lawliet

TW: Some NSFW, implied noncon, Yandere!L, gn!reader, kidnapping, implied stalking, captive reader, threat of intravenous feeding

words: 621

It has been exactly four months, seventeen days, eight hours, twelve minutes, and fifty-three seconds since the last time you saw the outside world.

But who's counting, right?

L is, apparently, as he casually brings it up in the middle of the game of chess he forced politely requested you play with him. Your eyes momentarily flicker up from the board sitting on the table before you; your brows scrunched slightly as you try to figure out why he decided to mention that.

Nothing with L is ever pointless ― you've come to recognize this fact over the last few months. Every word he says, every movement he makes is intentional as if he's a well-oiled machine instead of flesh and bone.

Sometimes, you wonder if he is.

"Is that so?" you settle on as a response, trying to sound casual as you move your piece, capturing one of his pawns. His dark eyes are fixated on yours, clearly searching for a specific reaction, though you're not quite sure which one. But you're almost certain that it's not nonchalance, so that's the one you offer him. It's a petty attempt at meaningless rebellion, really, but it makes him sigh, nonetheless.

You've learned to take any wins you can get.

"You've hardly touched your cake," L comments casually as he repositions his knight, glancing at the uneaten dessert he served you over an hour ago.

"I'm not hungry," you say with your eyes fixated on the chessboard, moving your queen.

"You've hardly eaten."

"That doesn't mean I'm hungry."

"That is concerning. Irregular nourishment can negatively impact your health and well-being. Perhaps we should consider having you fed intravenously, instead."

His words are spoken casually, yet you can't help but grimace at the thinly veiled threat. L is a lot of things, but he's certainly not a bluffer. You glance down at the piece of cake on the table beside you and reluctantly spoon a bit into your mouth, making him let out a short hum of approval and make his next move.

White to Qc6. You chew on your bottom lip in thought, scanning the board for a second before moving your king to avoid being checked. L's lips twitch ever so slightly.

"You're getting better at this," he muses as he moves to capture one of your pawns, his eyes not leaving your face. You try your hardest to avoid his gaze, moving one of your pieces to help defend your king with a slight tremble to your hand.

"You're getting better at this." It's crazy how such simple words can make your mouth fill with bile, the words of encouragement that used to make you beam. But of course, that was back when you first started working with L, bright-eyed and brain-full of fantasies about becoming the next greatest detective.

Before L put secret cameras all over your apartment. Before he drugged your tea and took you to his home, where he sat you on his lap and fucked you for the first time, murmuring those five little words of praise in your ear. Before he locked you up here, turned you into his prisoner with the excuse that he was doing it all to protect you.

"Checkmate."

L's voice forces you out of your thoughts, blinking at the board with a small frown on your lips when you see that he has won the game. Again.

He smiles slightly when he notices your expression, tilting his head in thought. "Did you think you were going to beat me?" His voice is full of genuine curiosity ― as if the concept of you beating him in something is a strange thought. And you suppose it is.

After all, L never loses.

#death note x reader #yandere death note #death note smut #yandere l lawliet #l lawliet x reader #l smut #death note #l x reader #l lawliet x you #l lawliet x y/n #l lawliet #l death note

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ddarker-dreams · 1 year ago

Note

do you have any hcs of what the yan genshin boys would b like when darlings on her period?

i'm gonna rank them from best to worst when it comes to dealing with this . let's see how they do.

best

zhongli is on top of his game. it's like he was born for the sole purpose of pampering you when you're under the weather. he'll insist on you taking it easy, drinking soothing teas, eating nutritious meals, and taking medication for whichever symptoms are the most prominent. if he seems oddly content, it's because he is. he won't state it outright, but he wants to leave the impression that him being in the position to care for you like this is worth the sacrifice of some... freedom. he knows of herbs and remedies to help make the experience as painless as possible.

kazuha already dotes on you as if you were royalty. while he leads a rather transient lifestyle, he puts your travels on pause to ensure you're properly cared for. he's sweet to a degree that'd be condescending from anyone else, but because it's kazuha and it's completely genuine, you can't call him out on it. he'll lay your head down on his lap and softly recite poetry until you doze off. he might not know much about periods specifically, but he treats it as if you were injured and need to be nursed back to health. he makes you your favorite meals from ingredients foraged locally. considers it a privilege on his part to be able to care for you. warmth blossoms in his chest whenever you have no choice but to ask him for something, your pride temporarily discarded.

albedo knows when your period is about to start before it even crosses your mind. he calculates every phase of your cycle and writes the important dates down in a calendar. he's all about preemptive care, he'll give you some concoctions of his own making the night before your period is due to start so you don't even have to worry about cramp pain. if you've been particularly troublesome lately, he might withhold this miracle elixir until you butter him up. he doesn't come outright and tell you this either, you have to do some trial and error to discern the specifics. as an alchemist, anything to do with the functions necessary to create life greatly fascinate him.

childe has sisters, so he's roughly familiar with how unpleasant periods are. he'll grin and reassure you that a little blood has never frightened him. thinks you're the cutest thing ever when you have to rely on him more. he's happy to oblige and is surprisingly intuitive about requests you never state verbally. he makes the tastiest soups, the kind that warm you from head to toe with every bite. there's no use trying to pretend you don't like it because he knows. he calms down on his tendency to tease you, since in his view, it's never his intent to actively make you feel distraught (unless you've acted out in a way that puts you in danger).

cyno means well (probably) but can come off as a little overbearing. he's literally breathing down your neck and constantly reminding you that if you need anything, just say the word. he's carrying you around, bringing you meals in bed, running all over town to get that one snack he knows you love; he's nothing if not dedicated. the thought of you being uncomfortable, much less in pain, is unbearable. when you do fall asleep, he's peeking into the room every five or ten minutes. every time you get your period, should any blood get on the sheets, he'll look you dead in the eye and ask if you've gotten in a fight lately. when you don't laugh, he starts explaining the joke, so it's better to force a chuckle.

diluc is just awkward about it. he refers to it as 'your time of the month' but even choking those words out is a struggle. he considers it to be a very private occurrence and thinks it'd be polite to tiptoe around the subject, as if it were taboo. the staff at dawn winery make further accommodations for you — everything you could ever want is a ring away. he's normally skeptical about you going outside, but since you're under the weather, he'll grant your request. if you're observant, you'll notice he's more inclined to give into your whims during this time. just don't get too carried away or he'll say he knows what you're doing at pointblank.

scaramouche is mostly annoyed that you're going to be more cranky for a while. your attention is essentially his lifeblood, but when you don't feel well, you're focusing on that instead of him. kind of inconsiderate tbh. once asked dottore if there's a way to prevent this, but dropped the idea when the harbinger said 'it only requires a few organs to be removed.' scaramouche would prefer your organs remain as is. he'll sigh and huff about how lucky you are to have him while spoon-feeding you, despite the fact he secretly enjoys it. his words are a whopping 10% nicer until you start to feel better, something he is frequently reminding you of. when your period is finished, he keeps staring in your general direction, fully expecting you to trip over yourself to thank him for his benevolence. if being delusional is a game, then he's winning.

when it comes to xiao, he's not awful per se, but this is likely his first encounter with menstruation, so you have to explain everything about it. he gets a bit freaked out the first time you wake up to bloody sheets, although you wouldn't be able to tell unless you closely observe his body language. he's somewhat at a loss when you explain what you need during your period and probably doesn't grab all the right things. he makes you eat these awfully bitter herbs that are supposed to help with pain. also makes some watery tea but gives you such a hopeful look, you don't have the heart to complain about the taste.

worst

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imaginesmai · 1 year ago

Text

Right around the corner - Azriel (5)

AHHHHH this is the final part and let me tell you I'm SAD. It was so hard to write the ending you all deserve after all this love, so I tried my best. Let me know what you think! Also, you deserve A LOT, so I made it long hehehe. Don't worry, a request about the RATH universe is coming soon! If you want one too, drop it in my inbox!

(1), (2), (3), (4)

Plot: The story of how Azriel fixed what was broken, and how you forgave him.

Warnings: this is sad, but has a happy ending! Also, mental health issues.

No one expected the sidra to froze that year, and against everyone expectation, one day Velaris had woken up to see the riven covered by a silver layer. Children had missed school to skate in the solid surface, parents watching carefully from the edge. Some couples were skating too, holding hands and giggling endlessly.

You had been watching the new scene unfold all morning. And while you usually loved snow and ice as much as any child in town, you were starting to get a little sick of all the noise.

It wasn’t your new employee situation, who had been staring at the river all morning. She had already finished her duties, but always the polite and nice girl, Elain Archeron was keeping you company.

When you spotted for the third time the familiar red-head through the glass and she didn’t say anything, just sighed, you decided you had enough.

“You should tell him to get in before he freezes to death” you commented, still busy with measuring the ingredients.

“Oh, no” Elain blushed and looked away from the window. “No. He’s just… He can wait”

“He can, but doesn’t have to. You and Lucien should head out, rent ice skates and have a fun day. You already finished here” you smiled kindly at her, and before she could reply, you added. “I’m fine, I don’t even like cold weather. And I still need to finish this, which you can’t help me with. So, go”

Elain stared at you with uncertainty, and you tried to look as convinced as possible. Would you have liked her to stay? After all, she was one of the few people you socialized with these days. She had turned in when you opened the bakery again, right after you posted the sign about looking for a new partner.

And even if you had had your doubts when you discovered she was Feyre’s sister and Azriel’s friend, you considered her your own friend.

So, yeah, you would have liked her to stay. Because you were still awfully sad all the time, and her company was one of the few things that made your day better. But you being sad didn’t excuse her missing a wonderful day with her mate.

“It’s not closing time yet” her eyes danced between the glass and you. “He was supposed to wait for me at the house”

“Guess he’s too eager to see you. He’s been dancing around the bakery for a good hour” you chuckled. “Elain, I mean it. Go. Have fun. I’ll see you on Monday”

“Y/N, I promise I don’t mind waiting. It’s not like it will unfreeze”

“And I promise I don’t mind at all. So, go, have fun and tell me about it on Monday” you gripped her hand softly over the counter, nodding to the waiting mal outside. “Come on, go”

Lucien was once more outside the bakery, the only visible part of him his red hair. He was covered in thick layers, but still managed to smile when Elain kissed your cheek and took her coat on the way out.

You didn’t have it in you to watch them be affectionate with each other, so you looked down at your task and decided it would be the last of the day.

It was hard watching all those couples walking hand in hand and remembering the feel of his warm, scarred hand in yours. To hear a man laughing and remember the unexpected laughs you dragged out of him sometimes. Even looking at the river was painful, because you could almost see the ghost of Azriel and you learning how to skate in a frozen lake in the Illyrian mountains a few years ago.

You had seen Azriel around a few times now, walking through your bakery and waving at you through the glass. Two times he had been waiting at the door when it was late at night, silently walking you home from afar without talking. Almost two months had passed by and your feelings were still as messed up as before.

Though you didn’t cry as much as before, and you were starting to get better, you still wondered.

If Azriel getting help would mean your relationship would be fixed, or if it was broken permanently. Deep in your thoughts, and used as you were to Azriel’s shadows, you didn’t notice how they tugged on your apron until the door sounded again.

Elain’s name didn’t leave your lips, because as soon as the door opened, you lost your breath. As if you had summoned him, Azriel walked through the door, beautiful as ever. He wasn’t in his usual training leather, but winter clothes that fit him as a glove. Instantly, you noticed he had lost weight. His shoulders were slumped and his body didn’t carry the usual grace of an Illyrian warrior.

“Hi”

His scarred hands, that had held you so many times and slaughtered so many enemies, were tucked in his coat’s pockets. You could feel the nervousness through the bond, the hesitance. Too stunned to answer, you only stared at him.

You had known that, eventually, he would talk to you. That you would have to do more than just wave at each other through the glass and stay silent when he sent you details through Elain. But still, you hadn’t expected it.

Unable to move, you only blinked.

“I saw Elain and Lucien heading out” he added, not looking away from you. “It’s a nice day outside”

Azriel hadn’t finished before one of his new shadows scaped his control, sneaking around the counter. The familiar ones, that had been by your side since he left, danced around the new intrusion. It lifted your apron, and crawled up your neck.

The cool feeling was the last of your worries, because no matter how much you willed yourself to say something, you couldn’t even tear your eyes from him.

The bond flickered between the two of you, once more. Knowing that it was one-sided, that he didn’t wear it like you did, made break your trance.

“She’s finished for the day” you explained, sounding way more confident that what you felt.

“It’s a nice day, yeah” he repeated, not giving you time to feel awkward before he continued “I thought that maybe you wanted to take a walk with me. It’s cold, but we could… get coffee. Or chocolate, if you want”

Azriel gave you a half, broken smile. Hearing his voice again made you take ten steps backward.

“I have things to do”

You looked down to your current task, which could be easily discarded. You had left much important things half-done because of him, and you would have done it normally without a second thoughts. But no matter how heartful the conversation at your door had been, you just knew you weren’t ready to have a conversation without getting angry.

You knew you weren’t ready to forgive him.

His new shadow gripped your wrist tightly before disappearing, and you heard Azriel’s doubt. He wanted to say something else, and you wanted too. Still, you fell back to your measuring and ignored the way your vision blurred, how your knees became weak again.

Maybe going back to your duties was the only way not to break down again.

The silence continued for a long minute. You couldn’t not feel his presence, the way his scent filled the bakery and made your stomach turn. Your heart recognized what you needed, what you wanted, and threatened to jump out of your chest.

Before you could regret your words, Azriel opened the door again.

“You’re forgetting the yeast” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

When you looked up again, he only smiled. You opened your mouth to tell him to wait, maybe to fuck off and never come again. You didn’t have time, because Azriel closed the door behind him and he was gone.

The first tear fell against the unformed dough, followed by many more. You wouldn’t be finishing the blueberry cake that afternoon, you realized, as you crunched behind the counter and cried.

There was a storm coming, and everyone in Velaris had had the same idea – run to the market, buy everything they needed for a few days, and crowd themselves at home with their loved ones. You were trying to follow the first part of the plan, not having anyone to go home anymore. And if that wasn’t enough reason to drag you down, the crowd was getting intense.

Velaris’ market was a beautiful place, full of shops and nice vendors. But that day, the space felt too small.

You already had a few bags with you, yet there were a few more to go. Wanting to finish as soon as possible, you had ignored the rational part of your brain and had gotten in the middle of the crowd. You had only managed to buy milk and pasta, and still had a long way to go.

After Azriel’s brief appearance, your life had been messier than before. He had come by the bakery at least five times more, always offering you some kind of plan you rejected. Going to the park, for a flight or to a coffee shop. Taking walks, watching the sunset or training together.

You lived now half-prepared to see him walking through your door again, and not having the heart to tell him no. You weren’t sure if that thought frightened or comforted you.

In your haste, you had almost forgotten to buy provisions for the storm, and had found yourself on the worst day to do them. Crowded, loud and suffocating, that was how you would describe the market at that moment.

The fact that most people ran with their children and family wasn’t helpful at all.

Most of the times, it was Azriel who did the last-minute shopping for you. He knew you didn’t like crowds, loud places, that you did best in your bakery where only five people were allowed at a time.

Another shove broke you down from your daydreaming, and you looked back to see a pregnant woman staring with her eyebrows furrowed.

“The line is moving” she spatted, pointing to the small space ahead of you. “If you don’t move with it, you should step out”

“Oh, no” you chuckled softly. You picked up the bags on the ground and took the two small steps that you were supposed to. “Sorry, I just thought I could take a little bit more space. It’s crowded here”

“I don’t mind crowds, so if you want to step back, let me get first. I’m in a hurry”

“Me too” you gave her a polite smile, mindful of her state.

The short distance that separated you from the customer on the front was certainly not enough, and she knew it. Still, she looked at you with disapproval. There were only five more people to go until it was your turn, you could buy your snacks and run to the next stall.

You thought you could ignore the glare at the back of your neck, and you did for a few minutes. Without meaning to, you thought how everything with Azriel was easier. Not only people wouldn’t dare to talk to him like that, but also, he assured you a good meter of distance between you two and the rest of the world with his wings.

The snacks on your hands almost fell when, not even two seconds after the man took three steps forward, you were shoved again.

That time, when you looked back, the woman was accompanied by her mate. His wings covered her from the people behind them.

“You should really step out of the line” she repeated. “You might have all the time in the word, but we are in a hurry”

“Me too. You can’t expect me to be glued to that man” you tried to explain, anxiety coiling in your stomach. “He just moved”

“And you didn’t, which proves my point. Besides, it’s obvious you only have a few things. We have more”

“Which should be enough reason to let me go first, not only because I was here before you” you shrugged, feeling even more uncomfortable when the male huffed a laugh. “Maybe it’s you who shouldn’t have come here today if you can’t wait in a line”

You weren’t a threat for the woman, and you were trying really hard to be polite and prove your point. Besides, being pregnant wasn’t an easy task, and you could tell she was far along. Maybe you should have let her pass, or maybe told her to fuck off.

But before you could argue further, something clicked in the male’s eyes, wide with recognition.

And you would have preferred for him to go full berserk mode on you. Because you recognized that look, you had been receiving them for a while now.

The male elbowed the woman’s side softly, pointing with his chin towards you. You didn’t have time to turn back and avoid the conversation, because he spoke.

“You’re the shadowsinger’s mate” he announced, loud enough to make a few heads turn.

“Oh” the woman finally connected the dots and lunged forward to grab your arm so tight you couldn’t shake her off. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry” you pushed your arm back, trying to let go.

While the woman apologized, you couldn’t help but listen to the whispers. The same ones you had heard in your bakery and through the streets. Some of them thrown in your face by rude or nosy customers that didn’t understand the concept of privacy, others by bystanders.

At the end, it was the woman who said it out loud, confirming what everyone in the small circle that had formed at the cue was wondering about. She finally let go of your arm and crossed hers in front of her body.

The look of pity wasn’t as bad as the confirmation.

“He rejected you, right?” it wasn’t a question, not when you didn’t answer and she continued. “We heard you’ve been mated for almost a century and he doesn’t want the bond. Is that true?”

It wasn’t true, but you didn’t have the heart to correct her. Instead, you turned around and used your wing-less privileges to sneak through the crowd. You kept your head down, as if that could stop you from hearing the comments or feeling the stares.

People had come up with an alternative version where Azriel and you had been mated for decades, for centuries. Where you had cheated on him or he had changed you for someone else. You had even heard that he had bonded with another person and had kicked you out of the house, and that you had been the one rejecting the bond.

Each version was farthest from the truth than the last one, but they all hurt the same. The crowd didn’t seem to get thinner no matter how deep you got in the market. Once the people who had heard the conversation were left behind, new people crowded you, worried about the girl panicking and running through the middle of the market.

There were a few occasions where you thought you would fall, where you tripped and almost embarrassed yourself farther. You had almost made it to the back entrance of the market when you finally realized you were tripping no more. There was no longer a crowd around you, nor whispers or hands reaching your way.

It took you another few steps to fully stop and assess the situation. When you looked back to see where the crowd was, you were met with a broad chest inches away from you. Through tearful eyes, you recognized Azriel’s wings tucking you away from people, his mere presence pushing them away.

You met his hazel eyes, full of worry and regret. His hair was longer, covering his brow, but you found comfort in his crooked nose, in his freckles, that you knew so well.

You noticed in his hands your bags that had been left in the stall, a new one with the snacks you were about to buy.

“What – what are you doing here?” you choked out, too grateful for the sudden moment of peace to wonder about anything else.

“I felt you through the bond, a few hours ago. Anxious and…” he stopped himself, his eyes scanning every tear that marked your cheeks. “I was just getting here when it got worse. I heard most of it. I’m –”

“Don’t say you’re sorry” you interrupted him. “It’s not your fault”

Out of the many things that were indeed his fault, people not minding their own business wasn’t his. You were used to him blaming himself for everything, from wars in other courts to people fighting in the street. The response came naturally.

Your nose was cold and runny, your hands frozen in your pockets, and your feet hurt. Besides all of that, you felt all wrong. Because you enjoyed his presence, because what they said, and because you couldn’t help but calm down when he was close.

Azriel didn’t say anything when you took the bags from his hands, thanking him quietly. He didn’t say anything as more people walked away from him, either because of his wings or because they recognized him.

“You don’t like last minute shopping”

It was a pointless observation, but it was better than to comment on how afraid he had been when, just outside the market, he felt the bond snap with urgence. His shadows knew where you were, and that you needed him, but even he had trouble running through crowds. Azriel also couldn’t talk about how mad he had been at everyone in that stall, how his new shadows had turned off every light and almost chocked them to death.

Azriel wanted to say that you were probably cold because you didn’t like your own coats, and most of the times wore one of his. He wanted to hug you, too, to feel you between his arms after what felt like an eternity and promise you that it would end well.

But he couldn’t say anything more than the obvious.

“I had to” you answered.

With a furious fist, frustrated at life, at him and at you, you brushed the tears off your cheeks. You could tell that he wanted to keep talking, and you did too. Since your last encounter, you had come up with more conversations you should have.

You stared at each other for what seemed forever. There were details that you had almost forgotten in your sorrow – like his long lashes, that you teased him about. Or the freckle that snuck up to the corner of his left eye. The way his mouth rose higher from the right, and the small scar on his ear from where Cassian dared him to wear an earring.

Only his face was enchanting enough to help you forget about the day, about the weight of your chest. It was the first closing call from the market, that sounded through the public speakers, that broke you away.

“I should go”

You talked at the same time, and you smiled softly when you pointed to different directions. You didn’t miss how his eyes fell to your mouth, how his own lifted up too.

“I could walk you back” he offered, not tearing his eyes away from your mouth. “If you let me”

You didn’t answer immediately. Those last words, that he had repeated so often lately, almost had you saying yes. You could almost imagine how it would go – him walking by your side, one of his wings behind your back. His elbow brushing yours, and his gaze fixed on you.

Your smile dropped when you remembered the times you had walked just like that, tucked together. The times you had waked by yourself through Velaris with his imprint on you, and the times he had left without a trace of your presence.

Azriel knew the answer before you said it, and his shoulders dropped slightly.

“Sorry”

That time, you decided to turn away before he could. Taking the back exit was a poor choice, knowing it was farther from your house than the main one, but you couldn’t picture yourself walking through the market without Azriel keeping the crowds a step away.

So you turned around, gripped your bags tight and didn’t tear your eyes from the ground during the whole way back.

It wasn’t Azriel who found you the time everything changed, but you.

The cold and winter were over, the streets were clean and the sun was out. It was a perfect day to spend outside, and Elain seemed fixed in throwing you out of your own shop. She claimed that the bags under your eyes were as dark as the night, and that your skin was so pale that she couldn’t tell the flour stains apart from it.

“Just for the record, you’re kicking the owner of the bakery out of the bakery” you stated, looking at her once more from the door. “You do realize that shouldn’t happen, right?”

“I’m helping a friend come out of her ghost-like season” she replied, still decorating muffins. “And you do realize that most shops close on Sunday’s, right?”

“Certainly not a bakery” you looked to the empty fountain at her right. “If we do it together, we will – “

“If you touch one single item of this bakery, I’m banning you from the kitchen for a month”

You doubted she meant it, she could. But still, you sighed and turned around to open the door. You weren’t an extrovert, certainly not an outsider. Since you were a child, you liked your kitchen, your house, and your space. And none of those things were outside the door.

But you actually feared what the fae you left behind would do if you turned back. Elain had already hidden your apron so you couldn’t put it on, and had threatened to mismatch the soy milk with normal one.

Giving her a last, tight smile through the glass, you walked towards the center of Velaris.

Not many people were outside that soon on a Sunday morning, but you were glad for her insistence the moment the sun kissed your face. The cold weather was disappearing and you could feel warmth across your cheeks. It was still cold, and it would be for at least another week, but the change in the weather promised a happy spring.

You walked aimlessly around Velaris, stopping to watch the Sidra move every now and then. Your feet carried you through unfamiliar streets, all of them filled with colors and smells. The longer you walked, the healthier you felt. Each step felt like a weight lifted from your chest, and you even smiled to a few usuals you found in the streets.

The main square peeked through the streets. It wasn’t your usual destination, too crowded and not as pretty as other parts of the town. But you still walked through it, feeling at ease and happy.

It had happened before, usually the days before you started your cycle, and you should have known the feeling of ease had nothing to do with the weather or the walk. It had happened and it happened again, just as you rounded a corner to walk in the square.

If, by any chance, Azriel hadn’t noticed you coming, the shadows that tugged him away from where he was standing would have made it obvious.

His eyes widened when he saw you, and you felt that peaceful feeling making its home for the day. There was no sorrow, no sadness, and none of the usual feelings that lately you felt when it came to him.

You cursed yourself stupid when you realized that you cycle was coming, and that every year you were in a mood until Azriel showed up, your hormones demanding your mate.

“Y/N”

Your name fell from your mouth and just by hearing it you noticed something different. It was new, and at the same time, you thought you recognized it somehow. You looked to his empty hands, to the syphons on his shoulders and chest and truth-teller on his side.

It looked like you had interrupted something important to him. But instead of running away from him like the last two times, you took a step closer.

“Are you going on a mission?” you pointed with your chin to his leather, eyes stopping at his chest. There was that thing, that you couldn’t name.

“Just came back. I was…”

Azriel looked to the building he just exited and for a moment, in silence. You had met a bunch of times since the incident in the market, and you had started having longer conversations. About the weather, about your bakery, and even about his family, who you finally knew officially.

Certainly, your relationship had improved, although it wasn’t just fixed yet. When he didn’t answer, you were reminded of all the times he had kept things to himself, either out of fear or doubt.

He seemed to doubt between telling you and keeping it to himself. Any other time, you knew, he would have kept it to himself. He had done it, in the past – when you asked him about his job, or tried to understand his past. Many times where he had evaded the truth or his emotions.

Your mood, that had been in a rush since you left the bakery, fell a little at his silence. He looked torn and you were ready to leave, before he answered.

“This is Madja’s house. I meet her here so we can talk, usually during the week” he looked back at you, watching the surprise of his statement. “But something happened and I needed to talk to her”

“What happened?”

Azriel’s lips were pressed tight, debating on whether he should tell you or not. He wouldn’t have doubted about it a year ago – he wouldn’t tell you, because in his eyes, it would only hurt you more than he already had. But he had learnt new things, and had realized that a relationship was built on trust. And that his fears, his perception of the reality, had broken yours.

He had cut the mission short when he had noticed, though he wasn’t sure he had ever done something like that. Azriel didn’t know what had triggered it, why it happened in the Winter court and not anytime sooner.

Madja, of course, had had an answer ready – an answer that had left him staring at her door for long twenty minutes before you appeared.

“Kallias should have sent something to Rhysand, but he didn’t” he started, not sure why he was traveling so far from the event. “So I went to check. Turns out someone must have taken it and, well, I tried to…”

He trailed off before he could finish, aware of your confusion. You never talked about what he did for Rhysand, in any court. No matter how big or small was the assignment, he didn’t tell you about it.

But that wasn’t what your confusion was about, at least not all of it. You couldn’t possibly notice because you had given it for granted since the beginning, but Azriel did notice. He noticed the change as soon as it happened, and babbled when he explained to Rhysand what he should have been feeling for years.

Had explained to Madja moments ago, who had given him a knowing smile and a proud nod.

“I accepted the bond” he confessed, continuing before you could say anything else. “I don’t know how, or why, but I was there and suddenly I was hit with – with this in my chest, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t happen sooner”

“You accepted the bond” you repeated, looking between his chest and face.

“I don’t know how, or why now. I was, thinking… And it hit me” Azriel smiled sadly, not saying what his thoughts were about – what they had been about since that night. “I didn’t want to tell you, because, this is, you don’t have to do anything now. Me accepting the bond doesn’t change what I did”

Azriel hadn’t meant to tell you, neither to be so vague and ridiculously nervous about it.

It had been a surprise when, in the middle of a conversation, he felt it. He had been thinking about you, because there were flowers and they were pretty against the cold weather, and to him, you were the prettiest thing the Cauldron had made. One moment Kallias had been going through the last movements of the package and the next the high lord was looking at him with raised brows.

Congratulating him for something that should have happened six years ago.

“It’s not that I didn’t want the bond before, Y/N” he continued when you didn’t say anything. “I promise you, I didn’t know how to accept it. I didn’t know that I deserved it”

Azriel had thought, and he still wanted to, that you so pretty that you were meant for someone else. That it was borrowed time, that he didn’t deserve the bond just as he didn’t deserve you. With Madja and Rhys, they had had deep conversations about his mental health, about his version of life where he lived through a glass of pain and rejection.

As he stared at your surprised form, he tried not to let hope leak into his heart. He knew it didn’t fix what was broken, but he hoped it was the first step of a long recovery to win you back.

Only if you could confirm or deny, instead of stare at him.

“Say something” Azriel finally broke, almost begged. “Whatever you want. Just say something”

And you wanted to, because wasn’t that what you had wanted? You had fooled yourself lately thinking about may what ifs. What if he had accepted the bond in the bagging, what if he had told you that he wasn’t fine, that he was broken and needed help.

What if you had helped him and not rushed things when he wasn’t ready. Now, it felt like the Cauldron was giving you that opportunity, only that you didn’t know how to react.

You finally looked away from him and decided to give an experimental tug on the bond, to see if anything had changed.

It had.

“Az”

It was a chuckle, maybe the beginning of a cry. It was anger but also relief because what came back from that tug wasn’t what you usually felt. It was stronger, solid, as if there was a physical string between your bodies that kept you linked.

Usually, it was just an intense feeling that was enough for you. But now that you felt him tugging back, felt him loving you, you couldn’t hold back another laugh. He shoved down through it everything he felt – adoration, love, joy. Many fears that had you stumbling towards him, and pain.

So much pain that your smile dropped. His dropped too, and you felt the bond getting fainter.

“That’s another reason. I didn’t want you to feel… that” Azriel retreated the bond farther. “I have so many fears and pains here that I couldn’t even imagine sharing them with you. And that – “

“You don’t have to feel ashamed” you cut him off, your voice hoarse. “I love you the same”

Words were unnecessary when you hugged his middle and buried yourself in his chest. He curled around you, like he had done so many times.

The channel snapped open again, and you just closed your eyes tightly. It was an endless source of emotions, and it broke you that most of them were bad. There was rejection, from so many people that it felt like an angry, black bull coming your way. Sadness that felt overwhelming and never ending, always coming in waves when Azriel didn’t expect it.

You also felt disgust, and you only held him tighter when you discovered it was self-disgust. Not only at the things that he had done, but also at what had been done to him. The scars on his hands, the shadows around him. He had hated himself for so long he had forgotten how to love.

But then, at the bottom, there was something bright, and that part you realized it was only dedicated to you. There was his family too, but it wasn’t as intense as his love for you. Everything that he lacked during his life, that he yearned for, was tucked where it mattered the most.

“I love you” he whispered against your head, softly. “I love you”

You didn’t answer, just raised your head until you could brush your lips against him. Later, you would have time to blame the cycle, which you wouldn’t get for another two months, or the emotions of the moment. But you knew it was just what you needed, what you both deserved, when you felt him kissing back.

At the beginning, it was just his lips against yours, and it was enough. Your noses brushed each other, you got on your tiptoes and his wing cocooned both of you. His hands only pressed you tighter against his body when you moved your lips against his, brushing the edge of your tongue against his bottom one.

Azriel could barely keep himself straight when you silently asked for permission to open his mouth, which he happily obliged.

From that moment, it was crashing. The kiss was only a physical proof of your feelings traveling through the mated bond, so wild and intense you couldn’t tell which one was his or yours.

“I’m sorry, darling” he whispered against your lips, giving you no time to reply. “I’m sorry for hurting you, for being a coward. I’m sorry”

“I forgive you. We don’t keep secrets anymore” you managed to say between kisses.

“Never” Azriel answered while leaving kisses on your cheeks and nose.”

“And we’ll talk about our emotions, and feelings. You’ll tell me about your life when I ask”

“Always”

“You won’t close off to me” you pulled his head away and made him look at you.

While you held his face between your hands, Azriel smiled. It was a different smile from the previous ones, from the ones you had seen so far. It was carefree, loving, and yours.

Your thumb brushed the corner of his eye, his upper cheek, the border of his nose.

“I’m here, Azriel. Always. So you don’t have to hide anything from me, or to be ashamed or afraid. I’m here” you closed the distance once more, controlling the kiss by holding onto his face. “Right around the corner”

“Right around the corner” he repeated, dipping his head and sealing all his promises with another kiss.

Want to read more? Check out my side blog @imaginesmaimasterlists, where I keep all the masterlists! Feedback is always appreciated

Right around the corner taglist:

@lesliemurillo @impossibelle @polli05927 @florencemtrash @going-through-shit @minakay @setayeshmohseni @torchbearerkyle @esposadomd @amysangel @kennedy-brooke @originalcrusadetrash @luvmoo @historygeekqueen @marriedtolike18fictionalmen @wallacewillow0773638 @tothestarsandwhateverend @kristalhi @knmendiola @nikt-wazny-y @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @wallacewillow0773638 @clara-geekhime @kalulakunundrum @saltedcoffeescotch @originalcrusadetrash @mel-wcst @ailyr92 @bubybubsters @chickensrock3 @tothestarsandwhateverend @topaz125 @wallacewillow0773638 @just-m-2 @theravenphoenix26 @glitterypirateduck @a-frog-with-a-laptop @justdreamstars

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Housing is a labor issue

There's a reason Reagan declared war on unions before he declared war on everything else – environmental protection, health care, consumer rights, financial regulation. Unions are how working people fight for a better world for all of us. They're how everyday people come together to resist oligarchy, extraction and exploitation.

Take the 2019 LA teachers' strike. As Jane McAlevey writes in A Collective Bargain, the LA teachers didn't just win higher pay for their members! They also demanded (and got) an end to immigration sweeps of parents waiting for their kids at the school gate; a guarantee of green space near every public school in the city; and on-site immigration counselors in LA schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Unionization is enjoying an historic renaissance. The Hot Labor Summer transitioned to an Eternal Labor September, and it's still going strong, with UAW president Shawn Fain celebrating his members victory over the Big Three automakers by calling for a 2028 general strike:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/uaw-general-strike-no-class

The rising labor movement has powerful allies in the Biden Administration. NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is systematically gutting the "union avoidance" playbook. She's banned the use of temp-work app blacklists that force workers to cross picket lines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

She's changed the penalty for bosses who violate labor law during union drives. It used to be the boss would pay a fine, which was an easy price to pay in exchange for killing your workers' union. Now, the penalty is automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And while the law doesn't allow Abruzzo to impose a contract on companies that refuse to bargain their unions, she's set to force those companies to honor other employers' union contracts until they agree to a contract with their own workers:

https://onlabor.org/gc-abruzzo-just-asked-the-nlrb-to-overturn-ex-cell-o-heres-why-that-matters/

She's also nuking TRAPs, the deals that force workers to repay their employers for their "training expenses" if they have the audacity to quit and get a better job somewhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

(As with every aspect of the Biden White House, its labor policy is contradictory and self-defeating, with other Biden appointees working to smash worker power, including when Biden broke the railworkers' strike:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

A surging labor movement opens up all kinds of possibilities for a better world. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, UNITE Here attorney Zoe Tucker makes the case for unions as a way out of America's brutal housing crisis:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-unions-should-join-the-housing-fight/

She describes how low-waged LA hotel workers have been pushed out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, with UNITE Here members commuting three hours in each direction, starting their work-days at 3AM in order to clock in on time:

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1669088899769987079

UNITE Here members are striking against 50 hotels in LA and Orange County, and their demands include significant cost-of-living raises. But more money won't give them back the time they give up to those bruising daily commutes. For that, unions need to make housing itself a demand.

As Tucker writes, most workers are tenants and vice-versa. What's more, bad landlords are apt to be bad bosses, too. Stepan Kazaryan, the same guy who owns the strip club whose conditions were so bad that it prompted the creation of Equity Strippers NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, is also a shitty landlord whose tenants went on a rent-strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

So it was only natural that Kazaryan's tenants walked the picket line with the Equity Stripper Noho workers:

https://twitter.com/glendaletenants/status/1733290276599570736?s=46

While scumbag bosses/evil landlords like Kazaryan deal out misery retail, one apartment building at a time, the wholesale destruction of workers' lives comes from private equity giants who are the most prolific source of TRAPs, robo-scabbing apps, illegal union busting, and indefinite contract delays – and these are the very same PE firms that are buying up millions of single-family homes and turning them into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Tucker's point is that when a worker clocks out of their bad job, commutes home for three hours, and gets back to their black-mold-saturated, overpriced apartment to find a notice of a new junk fee (like a surcharge for paying your rent in cash, by check, or by direct payment), they're fighting the very same corporations.

Unions who defend their workers' right to shelter do every tenant a service. A coalition of LA unions succeeded in passing Measure ULA, which uses a surcharge on real estate transactions over $5m to fund "the largest municipal housing program in the country":

https://unitedtohousela.com/app/uploads/2022/05/LA_City_Affordable_Housing_Petition_H.pdf

LA unions are fighting for rules to limit Airbnbs and other platforms that transform the city's rental stock into illegal, unlicensed hotels:

https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/strs-in-los-angeles-2022/Wachsmuth_LA_2022.pdf

And the hotel workers organized under UNITE Here are fighting their own employers: the hoteliers who are aggressively buying up residences, evicting their long-term tenants, tearing down the building and putting up a luxury hotel. They got LA council to pass a law requiring hotels to build new housing to replace any residences they displace:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-28/airbnb-operators-would-need-police-permit-in-l-a-under-proposed-law

UNITE Here is bargaining for a per-room hotel surcharge to fund housing specifically for hotel workers, so the people who change the sheets and clean the toilets don't have to waste six hours a day commuting to do so.

Labor unions and tenant unions have a long history of collaboration in the USA. NYC's first housing coop was midwifed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1927. The Penn South coop was created by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. The 1949 Federal Housing Act passed after American unions pushed hard for it:

http://www.peterdreier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labors-Love-Lost.pdf

It goes both ways. Strong unions can create sound housing – and precarious housing makes unions weaker. Remember during the Hollywood writers' strike, when an anonymous studio ghoul told the press the plans was to "allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses?"

Vienna has the most successful housing in any major city in the world. It's the city where people of every income and background live in comfort without being rent-burdened and without worry about eviction, mold, or leaks. That's the legacy of Red Vienna, the Austrian period of Social Democratic Workers' Party rule and built vast tracts of high-quality public housing. The system was so robust that it rebounded after World War II and continues to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/

Today, the rest of the world is mired in a terrible housing crisis. It's not merely that the rent's too damned high (though it is) – housing precarity is driving dangerous political instability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Turning the human necessity of shelter into a market commodity is a failure. The economic orthodoxy that insists that public housing, rent control, and high-density zoning will lead to less housing has failed. rent control works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

Leaving housing to the market only produces losers. If you have the bad luck to invest everything you have into a home in a city that contracts, you're wiped out. If you have the bad luck into invest everything into a home in a "superstar city" where prices go up, you also lose, because your city becomes uninhabitable and your children can't afford to live there:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#yimby

A strong labor movement is the best chance we have for breaking the housing deadlock. And housing is just for starters. Labor is the key to opening every frozen-in-place dysfunction. Take care work: the aging, increasingly chronically ill American population is being tortured and murdered by private equity hospices, long-term care facilities and health services that have been rolled up by the same private equity firms that destroyed work and housing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

In her interview with Capital & Main's Jessica Goodheart, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo describes how making things better for care workers will make things better for everyone:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-12-13-labor-leader-ai-jen-poo-interview/

Care work is a "triple dignity investment": first, it makes life better for the worker (most often a woman of color), then, it allows family members of people who need care to move into higher paid work; and of course, it makes life better for people who need care: "It delivers human potential and agency. It delivers a future workforce. It delivers quality of life."

The failure to fund care work is a massive driver of inequality. America's sole federal public provision for care is Medicaid, which only kicks in after a family it totally impoverished. Funding care with tax increases polls high with both Democrats and Republicans, making it good politics:

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/4/7/voters-support-investing-in-the-care-economy

Congress stripped many of the care provisions from Build Back Better, missing a chance for an "unprecedented, transformational investment in care." But the administrative agencies picked up where Congress failed, following a detailed executive order that identifies existing, previously unused powers to improve care in America. The EO "expands access to care, supports family caregivers and improves wages and conditions for the workforce":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/18/executive-order-on-increasing-access-to-high-quality-care-and-supporting-caregivers/

States are also filling the void. Washington just created a long-term care benefit:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-long-term-care-tax-disability-cb54b04b025223dbdba7199db1d254e4

New Mexicans passed a ballot initiative that establishes permanent funding for child care:

https://www.cwla.org/new-mexico-votes-for-child-care/

New York care workers won a $3/hour across the board raise:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/new-york-budget-fair-pay-home-care/

The fight is being led by women of color, and they're kicking ass – and they're doing it through their unions. Worker power is the foundation that we build a better world upon, and it's surging.

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/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

#pluralistic #labor #hot labor summer #eternal labor september #jane mcalevey #los angeles #weaponized shelter #housing #airbnb #equity strip noho #tenants unions #red vienna #jennifer abruzzo #nlrb #the rent's too damned high

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itsjunear · 3 months ago

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Shadows and Whispers

Note: Hello loves! I'll try to be more active and post more often, maybe once a week (this is my proof that I'm trying 😀). It's really been a long week for me, but I truly appreciate and I'm so happy for the support the previous post received. I'm very grateful for the likes, reblogs, and comments 💙💙💙 I'm not sure if I should make a second part of that one, but in the meantime, here's this. I hope you enjoy it, and sorry if it's a mess! Again, remember that English is not my first language, but if there are any mistakes, don't hesitate to let me know! I’m leaving the song I wrote this with, the slow version sounds really good :)

P.S.: I’m not really sure if this would work in ACOTAR, but I don’t know, I just liked the idea.

Words: +1k

Warnings: none, slight mention of tension

Summary: Reader and Azriel are sent on an undercover mission where they must pretend to be a couple. Reader has unresolved feelings, and the closeness with the shadowsinger leaves her confused.

The Mother definitely had a twisted sense of humor.

I was certain that in this life, I was paying for each and every bad thing I had done in my previous ones. If not, what would be the point of all this?

I had to suppress the complaint lodged in my throat ever since I had left the meeting with Rhys and he had communicated his plans for the Autumn Court.

Why? Why did these things always happen to me?

I could have gone with Cassian, Mor, or even Amren. I wouldn’t have had any issue pretending to be the lover of one of them. But of course, I had to go and pretend with Azriel.

Rhys had received a formal invitation to a ball in the Autumn Court, but decided to send us instead to investigate the political situation surrounding that entire red-haired family and how the stir was being perceived by the court’s nobles. Evidently, we were supposed to look as distracted as possible to catch any murmurs here and there, and the simplest way to do that was by pretending we were simply there to enjoy the evening as a couple in love.

Fantastic, I thought.

"I try to respect your privacy and not intrude on your thoughts" I heard Rhys’s voice in my head "but the way you’re shouting them, I could hear them even from the scraps of the Spring Court."

I grimaced but didn’t respond, letting the anger fill my mind so that he could feel it.

"Why are you so… irritated?" I heard him ask with genuine curiosity, and I sighed.

Rhys could dig just a little and find the reason, but he would never dare. Not without my permission.

"What do you care" I barked mentally, sulking.

I’d apologize later for speaking to my High Lord like that, but right now, I could feel the smoke coming out of my ears, and I guessed he could too because a laugh echoed in my mind before it simply vanished.

"Idiot" was the last thing I thought before raising my mental walls and reinforcing them with everything I had.

By the Cauldron, what was the problem? Well, for starters, I wasn’t in love with Cassian or Mor.

Hell, I had even suggested going with Amren to avoid going through this. Going undercover with Cassian was impossible—Nesta’s scent was all over him, and it wasn’t a secret that he had a mate. Mor was in the Winter Court visiting Viviane, and Amren… well, she was busy with Varian.

So that only left the shadowsinger and me free. Plus, neither of us was involved with anyone publicly, so we were the perfect candidates.

This time I didn’t suppress the groan of exasperation as I headed to my own room in the House of the River. I missed the company of the House of Wind, but now that Cassian and Nesta were there, it was impossible for me to stay—for the sake of my mental health, I fled that place. So I sighed and nearly cried when I reached my bed, bracing myself and trying to find the strength to endure what would happen in a few days.

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

Two nights had passed. Two damned nights sleeping like shit, practicing a mask of indifference and composure that I clearly didn’t feel.

I had also been more sensitive than usual, so I tried to avoid everyone, including Azriel. However, I saw Cassian every morning at training, and although I felt him casting strange glances at me, anticipating my mood, he didn’t ask about it. For that, I was grateful.

In a few hours, Azriel and I would be on our way to the Autumn Court, and I was just trying to control my breathing to avoid panicking. Even now, my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t fasten the endless buttons on the back of the pretty midnight blue dress, adorned with some crystals at the top and quite fitted from the waist down. Courtesy of Rhys.

A knock on the door distracted me from the mission, and holding the top of the dress to my chest, I opened it to come face to face with the man I had been avoiding with all my might.

I had to restrain myself from shrinking away upon seeing him in all his glory—not dressed in Illyrian leathers, but in a formal suit the same color as my dress, fitted in all the right places that made him look out of this world. If you added the large wings behind his back, the stoic hazel gaze, and the tendrils of shadows that surrounded him, giving him a mysterious and irresistible air… My breath faltered a bit.

He scanned me from head to toe as well, and the shiver that ran through me was completely involuntary. His gaze burned, but I did nothing to break the silence in which we were immersed.

"You look… beautiful" he finally said, hesitating a bit.

I swallowed hard and looked away, unsure of how to act. I had never been shy about receiving compliments, but when they came from him, they managed to destabilize me.

"Thanks" I whispered "You look great too."

Azriel nodded, and I saw his eyes drift to my chest, right where my hands were holding the dress.

"I need help with the buttons" I said in a tired tone.

He nodded again and entered my room, closing the door slowly. His shadows roamed freely, and I felt one of them caress my braided hair, making me smile.

"Sorry" Azriel apologized as he gestured for me to turn around.

I shook my head.

"I like them" I replied with a smile that died the moment I felt his fingers touch the exposed skin of my back.

"And they like you" he answered in his usual calm tone.

I didn’t respond, fearing my voice would tremble, and I focused on avoiding my skin from tingling wherever his touched. I even resorted to thinking about the painful blows to the stomach that Cassian gave during training when Azriel’s hands brushed dangerously low on my back.

I knew he also noticed the tension by the way his wings were tucked, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, I released the breath I had been holding once he finished and he removed his hands, though a strange sense of loss invaded me. Nevertheless, I ignored it.

A moment later, I turned around and faced him, tilting my head back to meet his eyes now that we were so close.

"Rhys told me you had certain… reservations about this" he broke the silence, looking at me with a calm expression.

Of course, he had told him.

I almost scoffed.

I opened my mouth to respond, but he interrupted me.

"We won’t do anything you haven’t consented to or that makes you uncomfortable"

I frowned.

"Of course I know that, Az. It’s just that I doubt this will work" I responded, smoothing out my dress a little.

It wasn’t entirely a lie. Though that wasn’t the main reason. It all boiled down to the fact that doing this with him made me nervous.

"It will" he reassured me. "Rhys and I have evaluated all the scenarios. We are the most credible for this plan. Just trust me"

I nodded, though I couldn’t shake the slight anxiety of having him so close.

The shadow from before wrapped around my arm, making me smile again. Even though the touch was cold, it didn’t feel strange, so I didn’t fear playing with it with one of my fingers, not realizing I was practically brushing Azriel’s wing membrane until I noticed his shiver and the way his breath escaped him. I quickly pulled my hand away and looked at him only to find him with his eyes shut and the rest of his shadows slightly agitated.

"I’m sorry, Az" I apologized. "I’m so sorry"

I knew how reserved the Illyrians were about their wings and how they shouldn’t be touched, so his silence only increased the unease brewing inside me.

"It’s fine" he replied slowly after a moment. "It’s nothing" but I could see him swallowing hard.

I bit the inside of my cheek but said nothing more.

"We should go now" he spoke after a moment.

I nodded and took one of his hands, preparing to pretend I was in love with him, according to that stupid plan. When in reality, I would stop pretending I wasn't, for a moment.

That was what terrified me—letting my feelings out and not being able to hide them again after tonight.

But there was no turning back now.

"Ready?"

No.

"Yes" I responded with the steadiest tone I could muster.

He gave me a deep look before I felt the shadows envelop us, and soon the room lit up, leaving us at the entrance of the grand hall of the Autumn Court.

Then, I let go of one of his hands and gently brought it to his cheek, trying to convey my intentions. He held my gaze for a second before bending obediently, giving me the opportunity to leave a chaste kiss on his lips.

The sensations exploded inside me, but I held back. This was a mission, I reminded myself. So why did his hand immediately curve around my waist?

This is just a mission, I repeated.

I pulled away a moment later, smiling softly at him. Before we both straightened up.

I supposed we had made it quite clear that we were together by kissing in front of all these people. I made sure to do it at the entrance so everyone would see, and I guessed Az understood too by the slight squeeze he gave my hand.

I looked at him one last time, letting a bit of my love for him escape. And then I turned towards the crowd, with a bright smile.

All right, the game had begun.

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